Embodied and arts-integrated languages and literacies education in primary teacher education

Becoming-teachers’ diffractions of opportunities-and-challenges

Abstract

Embodied learning and arts integration have recently gained more attention in research on languages and literacies education. Researchers have stressed that teacher education can act as a catalyst for bringing new perspectives on teaching languages and literacies to school practices. This study builds on a workshop series about embodied and arts-integrated languages and literacies education implemented in primary teacher education in Finland. Engaging with posthumanist and rhizomatic theories, the study explored becoming-teachers’ diffractions of opportunities and challenges in using embodied and arts-integrated teaching approaches in languages and literacies education. The study was methodologically conducted as arts-based research, specifically by creating poems with data as an analytical approach. The opportunities and challenges created friction between each other and became intertwined as opportunities-and-challenges. As such, the becoming-teachers recognized their value and adopted a critical perspective on the teaching approaches. Illustrated with four poems, the analysis indicates that the becoming-teachers’ engagement with these approaches set in motion thoughts about opportunities-and-challenges concerning (un)learning conceptions of teaching and learning languages and literacies; balancing pedagogical acts and realities; the friction of differentiating the teaching; and a mixture of (un)certainties regarding future teaching practices. In conclusion, implications for languages and literacies education, as well as teacher education, are discussed.