Why I Became a Teacher Activist

Abstract

As a teacher educator I talk a lot with my pre-service teachers about how their own experiences of life, education, politics and culture inform, shape and frame their actions and perspectives as learners and teachers. Heavily influenced by the work of Paolo Freire, my teaching emphasises a dialogical, participatory and fundamentally social understanding of learning (Freire, 1970). So my students and I talk a lot. About life, about our own schooling, our own experiences. It occurred to me recently, when I hit a brick wall in my Ph.D. studies, that while generous in reflecting on my own schooling and my experiences as a teacher with my students, I had never taken the time to reflect on my experiences as a postgraduate learner, despite a semi-constant and semi-conscious disquiet.