Nomadic pedagogies and possibilities for precarious times: Taking a stance against conformity in Australian initial teacher education

The twenty-first century has borne witness to sustained global crises. Environmental devastation, growing economic disparity, the rise of popularism and nationalism, xenophobia, threats to national and resource security and the precarity of human existence wound up in these phenomena characterise this time and reside in tension with unparalleled global interconnectedness and mobility. We are living in a time when our very survival relies on our capacity – the capacity of individuals and collectives – to act for social change. As schools and schooling are instruments of nation building, teachers have an important role to play in preparing young people to navigate the challenges cloaked in the futures they face and as such, schooling and teachers are increasingly required to develop the necessary skills in young people to help them navigate increasingly uncertain futures. Despite the urgent need for social change to address social, cultural, environmental and economic injustice, and the obvious role of education in these efforts, teaching and learning continues to be defined by conformity. Problematic notions of expected outcomes along predetermined learning continuums, standardised assessment regimes and the omnipresent need for accountability currently direct teachers’ work in many schools in Australia and elsewhere. The tension between systems of conformity and the need to develop adaptable, critical and creative thinkers binds teachers’ work in impossible ways.

This paper takes an autoethnographic approach to inquire into my experiences as an early career academic working in teacher education. I take up nomadic theory to propose pedagogies of possibility in a time characterised by impossibility. Through a critical examination of my own practice, I propose that the cultivation of spaces open to reimagining curriculum directives and co-authoring complex interpretations of education policy can be mobilised as an antidote to the dogma of neoliberal conformity that currently dictates teaching and learning in many education settings today. In cultivating pedagogies that are mobile and that can mobilise in-between contradictory spaces, teacher educators, emerging teachers, practicing teachers and young people.