"You gotta believe in something, something, something": Evoking literacy lives as nostalgia for the future. Issue 2 (3rd May 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Jarvie, Scott; Watson, Vaughn W. M.; Beymer, Alecia
• Is Part Of: Journal of curriculum and pedagogy. Volume 17:Issue 2(2020)
• Page Start: 186
• Page End: 207
• Publication Date: 2020-05-03
• Subjects: Nostalgia -- literacy lives -- English education -- teacher education -- qualitative research; Education -- Curricula -- Periodicals; Teaching -- Periodicals; Education -- Curricula -- United States -- Periodicals; Teaching -- United States -- Periodicals; Education -- Curricula; Teaching; United States; Periodicals; Electronic journals; 375.001
• DOI: 10.1080/15505170.2020.1738291
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1550-5170

Abstract

Abstract: We render in this theoretical inquiry, informed by empirical data, understandings of how preservice teachers' literacy lives come into curricular considerations of future teaching and learning in the secondary English classroom. In doing this work, we wondered about the past, present, and future lives of teachers: how might we understand the teaching of English as profoundly nostalgic work? Building upon the notion of "nostalgia for the future", and drawing across curriculum theory, literacy research, teaching and teacher education research, and the music of Frank Ocean, we attend to dangerous nostalgia in the current political moment, while also finding nostalgia for the future useful for ways in which through this considering we may envision and enact more just futures. We assert this nostalgia for the future, one necessarily prospective and not solely retrospective, as informed by written reflections authored by preservice teachers and teacher educators, and reflections of teaching activities in undergraduate and internship-year teacher-preparation courses. Ultimately we argue the concept affords a frame for making sense of the past while also orienting preservice teachers forward, building on that past critically for the work of imagining and constructing more just worlds for their future students.