Imagining a Teacher-Place Assemblage

Abstract

Imagination and creativity are vital for finding solutions to problems, and for enabling us to improve the quality of our lives. Michael Singh and Jinghe Han (2007, p. 224) suggest that what is needed in research in teacher education is "bold imaginings of what might be". And so I propose, in this chapter, the imagining of a 'teacher-place assemblage'. In carrying out our research with teachers in rural schools I found myself confronted by notions of both 'teacher' and 'rurality' that appeared to be 'stuck' in a negative discourse. I needed different ways of thinking to assist in 'un-sticking' hegemonic understandings of rural teaching. My search for a different way of thinking was facilitated by employing an arts-based methodology and adding a Deleuzo-Guattarian (Deleuze & Guattari, 1988) analytical perspective. From this methodology emerged the notion of a 'teacher-place assemblage' - a dynamic, relational notion of the teacher and place that suggests an extra dimension be added to both teacher professional development and pre-service teacher education to facilitate an understanding of the mutual relation, as suggested in the data and quotation above, between teachers and the places in which they teach.