Spreading acorns: Teacher futurity and micro-interventions

Abstract

There are few professions more concerned with the future than teaching. The process of teaching is often described as a function of the future in the form of objectives and assessments. Most of the common wisdom surrounding teaching insists on its influence over the future. That said, futurity in teaching is often undertheorized by those who discuss it, leaving theories of change concerning the future similarly nonspecific. This article offers a theory of futurity in teacher knowledge and education as a series of paradoxes. It is the site of both foreclosed possibility and openness. The future is a contested space where teachers work within sedimented systems and histories to produce hope through their work. One intervention we suggest teachers already engage in and we must be better at teaching to the next generation is micro-interventions which we expand upon in the conclusions of this article.