Beyond pedagogy: the creative and humanising potential of writing in teacher education

In this article, we argue it is time for discussions about literacy teachers’ experiences in education spaces to be pivoted away from externally-imposed priorities and toward an emphasis on the humanising and artistic potential of teacher education. Using Greene’s concept of wide-awakening and data generated as part of an international research collaboration, we present insights developed through analysis of a teacher-student’s experiences with writing during and after a university class. This particular teacher-student ultimately did not pursue classroom teaching. This rupture, while initially disappointing for our research purposes, made it possible to construct new understandings about writing experiences in teacher education as being full of potential beyond a narrowed focus on pedagogical outcomes. The questions produced through our new reading of this data highlighted how oversimplified future-focused discourses around the phenomenon of teachers writing may contribute to and reify a research and practical focus that centres pedagogical impacts and future outcomes. While rooted in literacy teacher education, we contend this analysis has implications for teacher education more broadly.