ABSTRACT
The authors attempt to locate teacher education within a pedagogical model that stresses the primacy of cultural analysis, teaching for democracy, and active citizenry. The authors begin by analyzing the reasons why teacher education programs have failed to take seriously the concept of schools as sites for self and social transformation, what the authors refer to as ccounterpublic spheres’.
Leftist educators are criticized for working primarily within forms of ideology critique while failing to provide alternative approaches to teacher education or what the authors call ‘a language of possibility’. The lack of a well-articulated, emancipatory political project defining current approaches to teacher education is linked, in part, to the failure of leftist educators to critically appropriate new advances in social theory into a programmatic discourse.
The authors conclude by providing an emancipatory approach to teacher education through the development of a curriculum as a form of cultural politics. Such an approach centers around creating the conditions for student self-empowerment and social transformation.
