Teacher education programs: local and global connections

Abstract

The day of the United States’ 2016 presidential election began as just another day at the office for us. We were working with colleagues to formulate a research programme around educational justice to respond to the rising levels of educational inequality and poverty in Australia. But our conversations were constantly interrupted by updates of the results of the U.S. election. Smartphones, tablets, and laptops were wired into the results of an election in another country geographically far removed from the offices where we sat. We were virtually and viscerally connected to the election through millions of tweets/posts (cultural symbols and social ideas virally transmitted across the globe). Some of these tweets/posts morphed into memes, starting out as a # hashtag (accompanying a real-life movement) and then becoming a meme when they spread virally and gained mass recognition. A few memes—#MakeAmericaGreatAgain, #BlackLivesMatter, #buildthewall, #deplorablelivesmatter—seemed to become sites of struggle and contestation not only in the internet pop culture, but also on the streets of the United States of America and across the world. These memes circulated through our workplace connecting our local conversations about educational justice to national and global conversations around identity politics, national borders, globalisation, and inequality. The memes had agency, they were deeply affective, attuning people into the hurt, anger, pain, and despair felt by people around the world. The memes were performing, not simply reflecting, the “social”.