An exploration of educativepraxis: Reflections on Marx’s conceptpraxis,informed by the Lacanian conceptsactandevent

Abstract

This article explores an aspect of Karl Marx's concept, praxis. Praxis is meaningful work, through which we fulfil ourselves by fulfilling others. The discussion draws on the author's work with postgraduate student teachers, where both students and author were researching their own practice. Reflecting Marx's conception of praxis as subjective fulfilment in the objective world, this activity was intended to trouble and complicate the categories 'subjective' and 'objective' , whilst enabling students to become both more autonomous and other-oriented. The intention behind this article is to develop the theoretical vocabulary of praxis available to educational researchers and practitioners. Some ideas from Lacanian psychoanalysis are introduced, followed by extensive discussion of Slavoj Žižek's concepts, 'act' and 'event' . The key argument is that in a nascent educative praxis, 'subjective' and 'objective' perspectives can be understood not as fixed points of reference, but as dual orientations on a flow of signification. These ideas are developed alongside detailed examination of two university-based research sessions with student teachers. With reference to session activities, a rationale is provided for an emerging educative praxis, in which students explore creative tensions between 'subjective' and 'objective' perspectives on school-based practice.

Thinking with certainty or with doubt: a Lacanian theorisation of discursive knowledge in teacher education

“…A recent related research study (Hanley, 2017;Hanley & Brown, 2016) involved groups of English literature and language graduates making the transition from graduate to teacher on a one-year school-based course of teacher education. In relocating discipline-specific knowledge from university to school, students were tasked with recalibrating earlier experiences as students and lovers of English in terms of classroom-based demands.…”