Palabras clave: formación docente; filosofía educativa; escuela secundaria; educación superior; Irlanda; reforma educativa; profesor en formación.

1. INTRODUCTION

In Ireland, the in-school experience of student teachers is typically responsive to the world of the school. The student teacher sources their own school placement and takes their place in school life as determined by the particular opportunities to practise and to contribute that are present there. The accrediting programme of initial teacher education (ITE) plays a limited role during the in-school experience. They support the student teacher, approving the choice of school, proposed timetable, and duration of placement. Higher Education-based tutors liaise with the school and the student teacher to arrange supervisions in order to guide and assess the student. Apart from these logistical and qualifying roles, the university steps out and allows the student teacher to be immersed in the life of the school.

The natural variety of experience which arises through this model has been raised as problematic (Sahlberg, 2018). The International Review Panel on ITE in in the Irish context noted that a uniform experience for all students is desirable and yet cannot be assured (Ibid.). This paper takes as its starting point a concerning proposal to address this diversity of experience by shifting the current model to a clinical school model (Sahlberg, 2012; 2018). On this view, the university would lead and operate the in-school element of initial teacher education in a manner “similar to how bedside training occurs in modern medical schools” (Sahlberg, 2018, p. 27).

It is essential to consider philosophically the potential ramifications of such changes for the development of student teachers as educators. My position here is that clinical schools – “clinically supervised”, “university-operated” teacher training schools – describe a sanitised experience. They are the epitome of the “strong”, where desirable outcomes are predictable and measurable, and the experience risk-free. On the other hand, “weakness, crucially, creates the conditions for young people to test and to explore their multiple versions of self—to identify what precisely is at stake in their exercise of freedom and responsibility” (Mahon & O’Brien, 2018, p. 182). To explore the potential impact of the clinical on the educator’s emergence I draw on the philosophy of Hannah Arendt and Gert Biesta, considering a life well lived in freedom and responsibility towards appreciating one’s own significance and the significance of others.

Of particular concern is the potential for constriction of the in-school experience by the university or the adoption of a functional view of the school by student teachers. Either would diminish the school as a space for student teachers to experience the educational world and to develop as subjects of action and responsibility. To illustrate my point, in this paper the reader will encounter a student teacher of Science and their enthusiastic, if unfocussed, students. These moments are drawn from my own experience and I am forever indebted to that class for interrupting me with their “newness and otherness, so that [I had] to take the time to figure out whether or not, and how, it might modify or contradict [my] existing knowledge and understanding” (English, 2013, p. 23).

Education as an interpersonal engagement may or may not happen and depends on the openness of both people and systems to the unpredictable and the real. Through the philosophy of Hannah Arendt and Gert Biesta I look to the student teacher as a beginner, stepping into the diverse and vibrant world of the school as an educator for the first time. This is a key experience in their education for subjectification (Biesta, 2013) and for the emergence of capabilities (Nussbaum, 2011) which will support their freedom into the future.

A central question arises here: How can we think about the in-school experience of student teachers in terms of those capabilities which promote subjectivity?

In this paper I suggest Interruption as an essentially risky, open, and unpredictable capability which contributes in a meaningful way to the educator’s life as a subject in the world. Interruption is explored in three senses: to be interrupted, to interrupt another, and to interrupt oneself. To be capable of Interruption is to value pause, engagement, and resistance. Here I turn to the scholarship of Andrea English on discontinuity and surprise, and Cara Furman’s innovative approach in bringing philosophical thinking to bear on initial teacher education in practice. Her approach to resistance supports the student teacher in becoming open to the unpredictable from outside and from within oneself, growing and developing through the experience.

I suggest that the in-school experience is a key locus for supporting student teachers to become capable of Interruption. Through the supported nature of the in-school experience the student teacher is afforded the opportunity to “exist in dialogue with the world” (Biesta, 2018, p. 15) to move beyond assertion of the self or the curriculum and instead listen and respond. In doing so the educator capable of Interruption comes to the world of the school anew, often. This is a slow, difficult, and frustrating way to learn, calling for openness and pause. As such, the in-school experience should allow for the experience of uncertainty and the emergence of creativity, for listening and response to one’s own subject-ness as it emerges in the world of the school.

2. WHAT MIGHT A CLINICAL APPROACH TO INITIAL TEACHER EDUCATION MEAN?

There is extensive multidisciplinary literature on the clinical in educational terms, particularly regarding the tensions and challenges in approaching the education of educators in a clinical way. Taking a clinical approach to teacher education was first mentioned in the Irish context in the two Sahlberg reports (Sahlberg, 2012; 2018), and the Finnish model is cited as having been “especially influential in shaping some of the reforms that occurred in Ireland” (Hall et al., 2018, p. 18). As such, turning to Finland and Ireland can shed light on what adopting a clinical in-school approach might look like.

There are three key features to the clinical teacher training model in Finland. The first is involvement of the university during the in-school experience. Student teachers go on placement to Teacher Training Schools where their experience is organised and overseen directly by the university (Sahlberg, 2010). In Finland the university has a high degree of control over the in-school experience of student teachers as “the general view in Finland is that teacher education is best delivered through universities organizing and controlling teaching practice through on-site or proximal [Teacher Training Schools]” (Raiker, 2011, p. 6 quoted in Hall et al., 2018, p. 56). Student teachers do some clinical training in the university itself, practicing skills in seminar settings, but the majority of their in-school experience occurs in “special Teacher Training Schools governed by the universities, which have similar curricula and practices as normal public schools” but a different staff profile and educational remit to “normal public schools” (Sahlberg, 2010, p. 5).

Where student teachers in Ireland can expect to spend at least 40% of their time in classrooms either team-teaching or as the primary educator, in Finland this is lower at one third (Sahlberg, 2010). This is the second key feature of the clinical teacher training model in Finland. The amount of time spent in school is less and the emphasis on in-school experience as a particularly valuable part of initial teacher education is not as pronounced as it is in Ireland. The time of the student teacher is also fragmented, taking place in blocks of time in a Teacher Training School as determined by the university’s requirements (Ibid.). As such, the Finnish in-school experience during initial teacher education is the epitome of ‘placement’.

The third and final key feature of the clinical teacher training model in Finland is the nature of professional relationships and supervision. It is arguable that the strength of such systems as the Finnish one lies in their consideration of the in-school co-operating or mentor teacher. The teaching staff in Finnish Teacher Training Schools tasked with mentoring and supervising student teachers are highly trained as educators and as teacher educators. The university recognises the centrality of co-operating teachers and takes responsibility for the educational encounters they mediate. Furthermore, in Finland the levels of initial and continuing teacher education are highly integrated. State-funded annual in-service training “primarily in areas important for implementing education policy and reforms” (Council for Creative Education Finland [Online], 2021) is undertaken by all Finnish educators. It is this cohesiveness to which the literature turns when accounting for the success of clinical teacher training in Finland (Burn & Mutton, 2015).

What does this model mean in the Irish context? Is clinical teacher training in the Finnish mode possible, necessary, or desirable? The first consideration is the intervention of the university during the in-school experience. It is argued that entering into clinical practice is to be in the field, rather than a specialist of it (Warner et al., 1977). This differentiates, for example, a practising physician from the medical researchers they refer to in order to inform their treatment recommendations. Teacher Training Schools both have access to the resources and support of university education departments, and are limited by their systematic, functional approach to education. Sahlberg concedes that graduates of this system may not necessarily have acquired experience of participating in a “community of educators, taking full responsibility for a classroom or students, or interacting with parents” (Burn & Mutton, 2015, p. 224).

In-school mentoring of student teachers by professionals who inhabit the classroom and teacher education spheres simultaneously sounds ideal in theory. It also sounds expensive, in terms of time and planning, financial investment and structural requirements. After the first Sahlberg report, a version of the co-operating teacher model was launched in Ireland (The Teaching Council, 2013). This was a slimmed down interpretation of the Finnish idea, which shifted the relationship between the in-school mentor teacher and the student teacher with little or no investment in the mentor teacher and no formal link to the university. Even in this minimal form it was deemed on review to be under-resourced (Hall et al., 2018) and has recently been side-lined in favour of a return to the in-school mentor as “guide” (The Teaching Council, 2020, p. 6). This was unfortunate. There is a considerable richness to the co-operating teacher model, undermined by a piecemeal approach and the undervaluing of the in-school mentor.

The second feature of the Finnish clinical teacher training model is the ‘placement’ approach to in-school experience. When it was decided in 2013 to expand the postgraduate qualification of second-level educators in Ireland from a one-year Diploma to a two-year Masters programme this placement model was adopted. Student teachers are placed in two schools over two years for a minimum of twenty-four weeks, where they engage in one hundred hours of in-class teaching (The Teaching Council, 2020). The placement in Year 2 must be at least ten weeks long (Ibid.). Apart from these minima the experience varies between institutions and between students on the same programme. For example, a student might not be able to secure a single placement which fulfils the requirements for Year 1. In that case they can complete their placement across multiple schools as long as at some point they spend 3 consecutive weeks in one school. Another student may secure the required minimum of two schools but those schools may not be particularly different from each other, even though the intention is that students have a more diverse experience through this approach. Should the university take a more active role in organising school placements? Perhaps. Does that mean the university should be more involved in the organisation of the in-school experience? Rather than asking where the line is drawn I suggest we ask why, and focus on the experience of the student teacher prior to logistical concerns.

Before moving any further into or away from the clinical teacher training model of in-school experience, those interested and engaged in initial teacher education reform should pause and consider what all this means for the student teacher as an educator. As Biesta writes, a focus on what education should do rather than what education is or should be, provides “a rather narrow educational ‘diet’ – perhaps effective in terms of what can be measured but not very nourishing” (Biesta, 2018, p. 11). Certainly, the strength of the clinical teacher training system lies in the domains of qualification and socialisation (Biesta, 2013). These are invaluable attributes, difficult to find fault in, and yet there is an underlying sense of both constriction and fragmentation. A functional experience such as this “is unable to do justice to the complexity of human togetherness” (Osberg & Biesta, 2021, p. 58). What remains in question is the impact this model has on the third and arguably most crucial of Biesta’s educational domains: that of subjectification, or the student teacher’s coming into their own as a person of individuality, agency, and confidence.

The control of the in-school experience by the university places the student teacher in school towards a single end, namely completion of a programme of study in an environment designed for their needs. I would argue however, that this singularity of orientation is problematic in educational terms, as it restricts an important open-endedness. Removing the messiness and unpredictability of everyday school life restricts the education of the educator towards their own subjectivity and so undermines the educational nature of the programme. It raises questions of how we understand education during the in-school experience of student teachers. Is it towards “an external, priori or ‘ready-made’ socio-political (normative) purpose” or can we think about education in terms of itself, as “an emergent entity that does not simply serve a purpose, but also brings with it the purpose it serves” (Osberg & Biesta, 2021, p. 58)? How can it learn to both be prepared and also wait and see? While there are merits, such as greater value placed on mentorship and diversity of experience, the former comes at a cost and the latter cannot be assured.

Simply put, the clinical school model is overly constrictive for the beginning teacher. Even given the best intentions of the educator and the students, their engagement may stay at the functional level of information transfer and never be acknowledged as an interruption, an educational intervention or relation. Richard Rorty describes it as the difference between the methodological and the inspiring, the distinction “between knowing what you want to get out of a person or thing or text in advance” as opposed to “hoping that the person or thing or text will help you want something different – that he or she or it will help you to change your purposes and thus to change your life” (Rorty, 1999, p. 145). Rorty was writing about reading, but in place of the reader we might imagine the student teacher. Such a perspective, going to school as an educator for the first time open to the world of the school helping to change your purposes from student to teacher “and thus to change your life”, is immensely powerful. It may or may not happen, and as such the in-school experience as educational event proceeds through risk and is always at risk. The educational task is to encourage students towards such a worldly perspective and not get in their way.

Promoting such a perspective is deeply challenging for initial teacher education. It calls on student teachers to accept their life with others as an existence in dialogue with the world (Naughton & Cole, 2018). Living as a subject in the world raises questions of freedom and relation. Educators are called to become capable of appreciating, really valuing, that “individuals emerge in and through educational processes in unique and unpredictable ways” (Biesta, 2010a, p. 6), that education towards subjectivity is education towards freedom. The risks to education as a relationship lie in not recognising that the educational event requires “response before assertion and anxiety before triumph” (Mahon, 2016, p. 49). It is a practical and existential challenge to our student teacher, calling on them to see narratives of control as fundamentally uneducational and strive to live openly in the world of the school.

In-school experience holds a unique educative potential for the subjectification of the educator, for their development as a person of presence and significance in the world. Education as subjectification encourages students to desire an unresolved existence in the world, where they stay in touch with the resistance within and without, committing to acknowledging this friction, and developing an instinctive curiosity towards these frustrations. Andrea English writes of the interruption in experience marked by moments of “perplexity, doubt, confusion, uncertainty, or trouble” which come prior to the identification of a problem or, I would suggest, an idea, insight or revelation, if the individual chooses to engage (English, 2013, pp. 72–73). It is for English, drawing on John Dewey, a pre-reflective moment, “the situation of being stuck in the muddy waters of experience, where things are not clear because we are not sure how we got there and are not sure how to leave” (Ibid., p. 73). For the educator capable of Interruption this frustration is the spark for conscientious and thoughtful enquiry, if the interruption is recognised as indicative of “something beyond the limits of our present knowledge and ability” (Ibid., p. 74). In other words, if the one interrupted is open to learning and being taught. It calls on the educator to draw on their capabilities of Attention, including reflection, and Uncertainty (which are outside the scope of this paper) to better understand themselves and their world. She goes on to discuss the identified interruption as “the problem”, following Dewey’s thinking, but I would suggest it is a prompt. Whether positive or negative, this moment of discontinuity holds potential to live better in relation. As English writes:

… the prereflective interruption in experience is as necessary for learning to take place as the reflective inquiry into the interruption itself. It is only on account of the prereflective, interrupted experience that the possibility opens up of recognizing the limits of our previously acquired knowledge and experience. In other words, we recognize that our previous experiences and accrued knowledge and ability do not suffice, yet we do not yet know what to change or even how to find out what needs to be changed. When our experiences are interrupted, this space opens up and opportunities arise for reflectively and intersubjectively exploring and experimenting with new ideas and new modes of practice (Ibid., p. 76).

The education of student teachers in school is both the experience of dialogue with the world and the exploration of their desires in the world. Learning and trying to live as a subject in the world “is characterized by the desire to give one’s desires a “reality check,” so to speak, so as to come into a relationship with what and who is other, not simply overrule it.” (Biesta, 2020, p. 97). The in-school experience during initial teacher education is a key moment in the encouragement of this desire.

3. WHAT DOES RELATION MEAN TO THE EDUCATOR EMERGING AS A SUBJECT IN THE WORLD?

To express how being a subject in relation matters to the subject themselves Biesta has coined the concept “uniqueness-as-irreplaceability” (Biesta, 2010b, p. 85) He suggests that uniqueness as an educational concern sets the individual apart through their responsibility to the world, a call to which only they can respond, should they choose to. Instead of setting the subject apart as different, their uniqueness as irreplaceable in relation to others is indicative of their significance. In this section I will consider the implications of coming-into-the-world and uniqueness-as-irreplaceability for initial teacher education. Specifically, I will consider how a foregrounding of this concept can help us develop a rich and nuanced understanding of why a fully immersive in-school experience is important to the education of educators.

To explain the importance of the environment in which the subject is situated, Biesta draws on Hannah Arendt’s assertion that “plurality is the condition of human action” (Arendt, 1958, p. 8) and that responsibility for this plurality constitutes “the condition of human action and human freedom” (Biesta, 2010b, p. 90). Action for Arendt comprises both our beginnings and how they are taken up by other people (Arendt, 1958). Action depends on and proceeds through plurality. As such, the environment of the subject matters, as subjectivity is only possible “in a world populated by other human beings who are not like us” (Biesta, 2006, p. 32). This perspective recognises the subject as continually emerging in dialogue with that which is other. This is a world-centred approach, orienting itself in appreciation of the whole world of education or the school. It values the open, risky “thoroughly worldly space” (Biesta, 2018, p. 16), and resists placing the focus of education on one aspect of that world such as the student, the curriculum or the requirements of an initial teacher education programme.

If we apply this thinking, we might consider that such programmes have a dual responsibility to their students: to open avenues into the world and to preserve “a particular “worldly” quality of the spaces and places in which newcomers can come into presence” (Biesta, 2010b, p. 90). Brief fragmented in-school experiences put the subjectivity of the student teacher at stake. There is neither the time nor their imperative to form meaningful relationships and commit to dialogue, so the significance of the educator doesn’t have the chance to emerge.

I would argue that modern programmes of initial teacher education work towards a ‘friction-less’ in-school experience for student teachers, one where the possibility of surprise is minimised and their expectations are met in a clear and obvious way. Such a smooth and sure in-school experience would, in Biestian terms, work against the subjectification of student teachers, removing those essential encounters of resistance and interruption by which they would know they were in the world at all. In fact “the key question in relation to what it means to exist in the world is what we do when we encounter resistance” (Biesta, 2018, p. 16). If the aim of education, as Biesta holds, is to encourage each individual to desire existence as a subject, resistance teaches us about our desires and how they exist in the world (Biesta, 2018). Education as subjectification encourages “an “appetite” for trying to live one’s life in the world, so to speak; it is about arousing a desire for wanting to try to live one’s life in the world, without thinking oneself in the centre of the world” (Biesta, 2020, p. 98). This makes the educational task one of making that existence possible or, at the very least, not getting in the way (Biesta, 2017). Those interested and engaged in initial teacher education carry this task as an imperative, a responsibility particular to this educational world.

Resistance, like interruption, can take many forms and spring from many sources. As well as experiencing resistance from without, the educational self can resist too. In fact, Cara Furman claims that it must, that resistance should, in fact, feature in the educator’s job description (Furman, 2020). She discusses examples where in the face of injustice a teacher speaks out explicitly or keeps silent in the moment but mounts their resistance in an underground way. To support the student teacher in becoming capable of Interruption, Furman and her colleague Shannon Larson developed a practice named Interruptions which “provides a model for resistant speech” or, drawing on Foucault and Arendt, “Truth-Telling” (Ibid., p. 2). She concedes that “though resisting can be ethically necessary… it can be very difficult for the teacher” (Ibid., p 3) and as such student teachers need support to become capable of thoughtful resistance to “rules or norms… official guidelines and the culture of a place” (Ibid.). She asks “what might we do so that more student teachers get an “invitation to ask”” (Ibid., p. 4) during initial teacher education?

The approach lies in encouraging student teachers to ask why, to question and to suggest alternative perspectives from the very beginning of their education. In this way, drawing on Hannah Arendt’s account of public speech (Arendt, 1958), students are invited to see their shared world from multiple perspectives, and attend to the limitations of their own view. It is a risk – there is no requirement to speak up and no guarantee of being listened to openly and receptively – thus it is an educative preparation for the ordinary world of the school on many levels. In practice, Furman and Larsen sat in on each other’s classes occasionally and interrupted, asking, for example, why the educator proceeded in a certain way or made particular choices. They encouraged students to join in the interruptions, adding an “advocacy component” (Furman, 2020, p. 15) in encouraging student teachers to practice towards becoming capable of interrupting themselves and their educational world. Sometimes the interruption had been invited in advance, to encourage the students to dwell on a particular point, oftentimes it was spontaneous. Questions were typically clarifying, sometimes unsettling or “stressful” (Ibid., p. 11), but always towards a greater educative end. Comments proposed alternatives, or shared stories of experience which interrupt the ‘how-to’ flow of pedagogical instruction allowing “students to see one way and then another” (Ibid.). The Interruptions initiative repositioned questioning from “posing a challenge” to “something one could learn from” (Ibid., p. 13). It shows that teacher educators interrupting each other, modelling Interruption as a capability of the educator, can bring to life the purpose and practice of resistance.

4. WHAT DOES FREEDOM MEAN TO THE EDUCATOR EMERGING AS A SUBJECT IN THE WORLD?

The questions of freedom which arise in initial teacher education are imbued with the responsibility of a life of significance in relation. They concern the freedom needed to be a subject of action in the world and the fundamentally existential nature of that freedom.

An emphasis on freedom is important because it differentiates the student teacher becoming part of a community, through socialisation, from the student teacher becoming a unique person of significance, via subjectification (Biesta, 2013). Here I turn to Hannah Arendt and her writing on the modalities of life, namely labour, work, and action (Arendt, 1958). While labour and work are concerned with structure, action is the personal ongoing freedom to create, and the possibility to achieve freedom through creation (Ibid.). Action in this sense is to take initiative, to begin something, and addresses the capability of each person to be a beginning and a beginner (Arendt, 1977).

This is particularly pertinent for student teachers, beginning as a beginner in a very public way through their words and their deeds. Interruption or discontinuity of experience marks a beginning, and “beginnings result in the learner finding [themselves] in an in-between realm of learning” (English, 2013, p. 77) where what they thought they knew will not suffice and they don’t yet know what to do about it. The student teacher is in “an exploratory space for learning, between new and old ideas” (Ibid., p. 60), drawn into relation with the world in a new way. From this unchosen encounter “new and unforeseen opportunities for the learner to discover new choices for thought and action” arise (Ibid., p. 77). By emphasising beginnings, the freedom to be a beginner, and so the freedom to make mistakes and need help, is opened up.

It is also pertinent to their students in school. For the student teacher approaching a mixed-ability Science class, recognising that everyone no matter their standard will at some point meet with challenge is a liberating moment. It is the educator’s responsibility to give their students this conception of freedom, the freedom to strive and to falter, to act as a beginner. For our nascent educator, this means becoming comfortable with an open, honest creative classroom where they take responsibility for letting students take initiative. There may be fewer structured activities and more moments of slow, frustrating engagement, but this is the educational way.

This freedom is of the individual in community. Where each person can initiate something unique they become both irreplaceable to the world and free in it. It is not a freedom of the will or intellect but a freedom of choice, “the freedom to call something into being which did not exist before… not even as an object of cognition or imagination and which therefore… could not be known” (Arendt, 1977, p. 150). As Cara Furman holds that the educator who resists does so out of duty (Furman, 2020), so too for Hannah Arendt freedom is an event, present when people act guided by principles such as “honour or glory, love of equality… or distinction or excellence… or distrust or hatred” which originate outside of themselves (Arendt, 1977, p. 151). It is a sort of confidence, which married with a commitment to professional competence can develop into capability (Nussbaum, 2011). The student teacher learns to be inspired by their students, to respond rather than assert. It is a shift from freedom as sovereignty to freedom as beginning, and makes freedom and the appearance of the subject a concern of education.

According to Arendt, action brings together being free and the capability to do something. The subject’s capability for action depends on other people, also beginners, taking up their beginnings and making their own of them (Arendt, 1958). This is risky and depends on the capability of the educator to work with risk. Letting their beginnings be taken up in the world is the freedom of the subject, and the capability to do so is their capability to act. The student teacher may try new approaches with their challenging class and some will not work out. Coming to understand exactly why, rather than attributing blame or insisting on having their own way, brings the educator into the world as a subject of responsibility. Thus, freedom and action are capabilities only when they are committed to in relation, and this is the condition for the emergence of the subject into the world.

Relation works both ways. Any attempt to control our beginnings as they move into the world will not only impinge on our own subjectivity but the subjectivity of others. Likewise, a diminished world will not respond in a rich and authentic way. For example, if our student teacher were to spend a month with that Science class in order to trial the “think-pair-share” pedagogy, the constraints put on their experience make it uneducational. The time is too short, the space is not free and the educator is not being responsive to their students. It is an academic exercise of ‘placement’, one that puts the education of the student teacher and the school students at stake.

Arendt holds that diminution of the world is a form of isolation and “to be isolated is to be deprived of the capacity to act” (Arendt, 1958, p. 188). For Arendt the public domain lies in the nature of human interaction, a quality of worldliness in the space where people live in relation. It is “where I appear to others as others appear to me”, where people make their appearance explicitly (Arendt, 1958, p. 198). Thus, not only does the student teacher rely on relation, they rely on plurality and difference, openness and messiness, if they are to emerge as a free subject of action in the world. The emergence of subjectivity depends crucially on their attitude to difficulty, whether to engage, eliminate or evade. Rich in-school experiences during initial teacher education offer an invaluable opportunity to encounter difficulty in a free but supported sense.

A risky encounter, this freedom calls on the individual to make a space in the world, developing in relation rather than thoughtlessly slotting in. Let us turn again to our student teacher and their Science class. A mixed ability class is often rich in questions, not always pertinent but expressions of interest and engagement nonetheless. How will our student teacher respond? Will they live in dialogue or refuse their unique responsibility?

Freedom in this sense is existential, not something the subject owns or can claim. The subject is called upon to become capable of risk so that they can understand the possibility sense-making represents and to value the essential alterity of the other, rather than seeing either as a threat to their own freedom. As a radically open engagement the educator has the option to resist thoughtlessly and refuse to emerge as a subject in their own life. They may choose to focus only on enacting repeatable pedagogies and fulfilling the instrumental expectations of their programme. Or they may recognise the responsibilities they hold to themselves and to their students go beyond qualification, calling for openness and trust. The educational concern is in encouraging each and every individual to desire to live in the world as a subject, to freely take up their responsibility in the world and learn their own significance.

Thinking of the student teacher in the context of the school, their beginnings as an educator are being taken up by students, colleagues and the life of the school. They are interpreted by other people in a given context, and as such are always at risk if they are to be authentic and free. Constricting the beginnings of a student teacher through, for example, short fragmented ‘placements’ or by specifying the pedagogies they employ, inhibits their emergence as a subject in the world. It restricts the student teacher’s beginnings, and it restricts how the world of the school can respond to those beginnings so blocking the opportunities of others to come into the world as subjects in the fullest sense. Thinking of our Science class again, the school students may comply with whatever the student teacher suggests as they know this will be for one class per week for a month. There is no need to acknowledge the educator or to relate to them; they may as well ‘just go along with it’ and look forward to having their ‘real’ teacher back fulltime.

In highly-controlled, clinical in-school experiences the student teacher cannot exist as a subject; they do not have the opportunity to find out how they are in the world of the school. The student teacher needs the opportunity to live in the world of the school and come gradually to an understanding of their presence in that world. They need the opportunity to “acknowledge and come to terms with the reality of what and who we encounter in the world… as world” (Biesta, 2018, p. 15) in order to understand their significance, to see their subject-ness emerge in relation, and to become free.

Given time, space and support our student teacher will come to know their Science class as a world of its own, one with integrity and richness. Such an in-school experience allows the student teacher to come to understand what freedom and responsibility mean in an educational context. Likewise the development of school students is inhibited if they cannot respond authentically to their teacher. Given time and space they will start to see the student teacher as part of their school world, for better or for worse. In this way the educator and the school students engage with each other’s beginnings, free to encounter the world of the school.

5. HOW CAN WE THINK OF INTERRUPTION AS A CONDITION OF EDUCATION AND AN EDUCATIONAL CAPABILITY?

To think of discontinuity as a condition of education and Interruption as an essential capability of the educator places value on those encounters which slow, stall and surprise. Andrea English writes that

the notion of surprise in particular helps get at the meaning of interruption in experience. It draws attention to those moments when something unexpected happens and our taken-for-granted experience of the world is interrupted… We cannot altogether escape the experience of surprise (English, 2013, p. 58).

But we can endeavour to become capable of it. Though not necessarily comfortable or welcome, interruption has the potential to introduce something new and worldly. Here I explore the value of interruption and the threat posed by clinical models to slow, unpredictable encounter during the in-school experience of student teachers.

Initial teacher education should be mindful of the risk that nascent educators may choose to proceed through their career in a world of their own. To mitigate against this, initial teacher education programmes should allow the everydayness of education to break through routines and interrupt, asking whether the ideas and assumptions brought to the classroom are indeed desirable, useful or true. This can be planned for in two ways – the time invested and the quality/qualities of the in-school experience. Rather than predefining expectations, the prior focus should be on ensuring that no event or encounter in the world of the school is foreclosed.

How can we know that we are in the world? Biesta suggests that “the encounter with the world… manifests itself as the experience of resistance” (Biesta, 2018, p. 16). Resistance is a form of interruption experienced as friction, a force which slows us down by refusing to go smoothly with our flow. It can manifest as indirect resistance (“the world is trying to teach us something”), direct external resistance (a question posed directly to us in relation), or direct internal resistance (“a question in our own lives”) (Biesta, 2017, p. 16). These forms of resistance have one thing in common – they require time and attention in order to manifest. If our student teacher has embarked on a programme which parachutes her into schools for four weeks at a time, twice a year with a pre-defined agenda to fulfil, as clinical teacher training models suggest, neither the opportunity for the world to rise up and teach them something nor the natural arrival of questions outside of their remit are valued. Though, given the relentless realness of the world of the school, interruptions will arise.

Thus, the key educational question interruption-as-resistance raises concerns what happens when it is encountered. A positive experience of openness and interruption during the in-school experience, where the student teacher has time and is supported in multiple ways, is invaluable as they come to consider an existence as a subject in the world. Such an existence calls on the educator to view their desires, such as an orderly classroom or high-attaining students, in the context of the world. Through subjectification desires shift from singular pursuits to an aspect of how we situate and orient ourselves in relation.

In encountering resistance there is always the risk that it will be shut down. Think of the student teacher we encountered earlier. Faced with a barrage of random science-related questions, how do they respond? Will they act as a subject of freedom and responsibility in the world? If the educator pushes back with their intentions they exhibit a lack of respect for the integrity of the source of resistance. In so doing the context which allowed resistance to emerge is shut down, what Biesta terms “world-destruction” (Biesta, 2020, p. 97). In this case the classroom environment becomes toxic to the students’ interventions. A second possible reaction to encountering resistance is to withdraw oneself as subject and refuse to engage. Biesta terms this abandonment of the educator’s ambitions and initiatives in the world “self-destruction” as the self ceases to exist in the world as a subject (Ibid.). Here the teacher makes it clear that they are not interested or listening, withdrawing from the world of the classroom and dialogue with their students. In the former the world retreats from educational engagement, and in the latter it is the educator who shifts to a functional mode. Staying in the world and protecting its risky educational nature are the difficult, frustrating and slow option by comparison. For example, our educator may allocate some time in class to scientific questions which interest the students but are not directly related to the topic. Perhaps they also dedicate physical space to displaying these questions and inviting the students to research answers. In this way, our student teacher is being taught by their students to be a responsible, free person of significance and to ensure the openness of the world of the school.

In my view, clinical teacher training models introduce an element of world-destruction by removing the weak and unpredictable elements from in-school experience, and they encourage self-destruction by promoting expedience and surety. The clinical enacted in this way undermines educational engagement as an ongoing exploration of the encounter with what and who is other, of what an existence in and with the world might mean. As such, opportunities for the student teacher to experience in a meaningful way the life of the school in its plurality and difference is turned down in favour of “systematic clinical practice” (Sahlberg, 2012, p. 18) in “university-operated clinical training schools” (Sahlberg, 2018, p. 33). Minimising risk, interruption and resistance deprives the student of key teachings about their educational desires and how those desires exist in the world.

These two extremes are not inevitable, and in reality they are fantastical. No frictionless world or self is possible to achieve. Student teachers will encounter resistance during their in-school experience and throughout their career. The challenge, once a commitment to exist as subject in the world has been made, is for the educator to recognise resistance, their own or by others, as different from rebellion or insurrection. Resistance is a hesitant educational gesture, and as such the response to resistance is pause rather than intervention. It is to be in Biesta’s “state of dialogue” or English’s “realm of the in-between” where the educator chooses to live in difficulty, balancing their uniqueness with their desire to exist in the world (Biesta, 2017, p. 15; English, 2013, p. 77). Being in dialogue is “not a place of pure self-expression, but rather a place where our self-expression encounters limits, interruptions, responses” (Biesta, 2017, p. 15). Living with resistance would amount to world-destruction and self-destruction combined, a sort of senseless response or a form of complacency. Turning once more to our beginning Science teacher, living with resistance for them might look like shouting over the students’ questions. They might decide that teenagers are distracted and disruptive, and other than disciplinary measures there is nothing that can be done. They might ask questions like “do you think you’re smart, changing the topic like that?” in an effort to gain superiority. Dialogue in response to resistance is not a contest or a problem to be solved. Rather, it is an ongoing, lifelong challenge inherent to a committed existence in the world as a subject.

Interruption is the pinnacle of resistance, asking us whether what we desire is actually desirable and so interrupting us on the path of that desire. Is it educational to desire control? Silence? Conformity? Interruption is the resistance we encounter once we agree to live in the world with other, the resistance that shapes us, turns us around, alters our velocity, sometimes almost imperceptibly and sometimes completely. Interruption stops us in our tracks, calls us to stop and think, but first to listen. To be interrupted in this way is to have registered something in relation. This call, this question, interrupts us so that we might fully exist in the world.

We also need to think about the messages and norms our systems implicitly and explicitly send out. Biesta uses the example of capitalism preferring an infantile population motivated by personal desires (Biesta, 2017). What message does clinical schooling, brief, self-oriented in-school experience, send to student teachers? What does it say of our regard for life in school? Introducing the student teacher into the reality of school life and allowing them to practice there for a reasonable period of time gives the opportunity to experience interruption in a supported way and become capable of Interruption in an educational sense.

Neglecting to interrupt is also un-educational. Unchallenged, preconceived ideas of the good student, poor behaviour or high standards, as well as what resources are available including support at home, allow the student teacher to independently form an impression of what they can assume, depend on, or afford not to think about. This is a dangerous game and emphasises the need for high-quality in-school mentorship. Mentors in the mode of co-operating teachers know the context of the school and its students and are invested in the education of the student teacher. Taking a minimalist approach to in-school mentorship undermines all involved.

Other interruptions may feel un-educational, they may seem like an imposition. Take for example our Science teacher who really engages with the questions their class poses. They need to figure out how to interrupt the curriculum educationally, in the mode of dialogue. This will be different for every class and relies on the educator taking the time to develop in relation to their students. Brief ‘placements’ in school or overbearing mentors can get in the student teacher’s way. Biesta warns against “taking all resistance out of education by making it flexible, personalised and tailored” (Biesta, 2017, p. 19) or sanitised, predefined and measurable. In these instances education becomes responsive only to the self, losing its relationality to the world. The alternative would be an educational experience, one of being supported towards being in the world, experiencing resistance and learning its value, and in so doing arousing the desire to exist dialogically, in the “in-between”.

Unsolicited educational interruptions may appear as acts of power from the perspective of the student. Deborah Britzman writes of Anna Freud’s belief that education is composed from all types of interference and that it begins in the individual rather than when something is done to them (Britzman, 2003). Freud describes these relations as “qualified by the push and pull of dependency and autonomy, immaturity and maturity, and mutual interference and influence… having to learn and having to teach is felt as interference… Significance, or better, education, is made from this conflict” (Britzman, 2003, p. 8).

The work of the teacher, and by extension those engaged in teacher education, then includes being capable of introducing interruption, suspension and sustenance in an educational way. Done well, this educational relation has the potential to move from one of power and intrusion to appreciation, where the educator is named as teacher retrospectively by their student. This shifts the locus of power to the nascent educator, letting them speak in response to interruption in an appreciative way. Interruption becomes contribution, and they become capable of moving into a reciprocal relation.

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