Be-Coming To Care: Teachers' Perspectives on Caring

Abstract

This research is a qualitative study aimed at growing towards a deeper understanding of how teachers be-come caring teachers. Using current thinking in affect studies, particularly the work of Massumi (1995, 2005) and Ahmed (2004), narratives are created to highlight the subtle gestures, miniscule slidings, and everyday occurrences that can be overlooked and that intimate the relationship between teacher and students. Through teachers’ own performance of their narrative and using the diffractive framework of Barad (2003) and Lenz Taguchi (2012), a flattening of the relationship between researcher, participants, theory, and data (Jackson & Mazzei, 2013) emerges and an opening is created to a difference, a movement, a newness, a change (MacLure, 2013). This study is aimed to render a clearer picture of affect and care in education that captures all the good being done, to open up new conversations about alternate thoughts about education, primarily where education is care.