At the Intersection of Selves and Subject

Book excerpt: At the Intersection of Selves and Subject: Exploring the Curricular Landscape of Identity aims to raise awareness of the inextricability of our teaching and learning selves and the subjects with whom and which we engage. By exploring identity at this intersection, we invite scholars and practitioners to reconceptualize relationships with students, curriculum, and their varied contexts. Our hope is to encourage authenticity, consciousness, and criticality that will foster more liberating ways of teaching and learning. This collection will be useful for pre- and in-service teachers, teacher educators, and educational researchers. It is a valuable resource for teacher education courses such as Curriculum Studies, Reflexive Practice, Philosophy of Education, Sociology of Education, Teaching Methods, Current Issues in Education, Collaborative Inquiry, and Narrative Inquiry. “At the Intersection of Selves and Subject lays bare the deepest under layers of the teacher self and subject with new energy. The sharing of reflexive inquiries in ethical self-consciousness liberates and unwraps queries into pedagogical practice. This is an important book for all educators, but especially for pre-service teachers as they consider or challenge the donning of teacher identity.” – Pauline Sameshima, Canada Research Chair in Arts Integrated Studies, Lakehead University, and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies “A pendant of images and texts, this collection is a dazzling display of Ellyn Lyle’s insight that “understanding self is a way to understand other and society.” That and other affirmations are depicted narratively and theoretically, across and within indigeneities, singular exceptional identities, and paradoxical and (inherently) political identities. This collection invites us to work from within to reconstruct the self professionally. This pulsating portrait of juxtapositions teaches transpositions and extricates intertextualities. Through resolve, we are preserving this fragile someday shared space for being. Open this book as entering one such space; study what this pendant refracts in you.” – William F. Pinar, Canada Research Chair, University of British Columbia, Vancouver