Using Alain Badiou's Ethic of Truths to Support an 'Eventful' Social Justice Teacher Education Program

Abstract

In this paper, the authors articulate a social justice purpose for an undergraduate teacher education program at a major Canadian university that they hope will inform more general discussions about social justice and teaching. The thesis they explore is the necessity for social justice teaching to utilize the acquisition of subject matter as a means to examine the ways in which our individual "nexus of privilege and ignorance reflect broader struggles over purposes and identities around which social practices such as education coalesce. After developing this thesis in relation to relevant literature, they turn to Henderson and Gornik's (2007) paradigmatic interpretation of "curriculum wisdom" and Badiou's (2000, 2001, 2003) ethical subjectivity of "truth-processes" to explore what the organization of curriculum in support of social justice might look like.