On teaching and identity

It is important to keep in mind that, despite all our good intentions, we may still remain trapped in the cultural framework from which we have emerged and in which we operate. This means that we construct our professional identity as teachers not as freely as we may think, and frame it so as it conforms to the established context, which remains for the most part unchallenged and is self-perpetuating. We need to keep in mind that in some cases “the self participates in its own subjugation and domination whether it is through ‘false consciousness’ produced by membership of a particular social group, or the internalisation of social ‘oppression’ through individual ‘repression’ ”. (Chappell et al, 2003, p. 6) The challenge for me, as a teacher participating in a professional context is to recognize such dynamics when engaging in mindful reflection.

THESIS PUBLICATION

Dear readers,

I am happy to say that I have presented and discussed my thesis in June 2010.

The report is now available on-line at Linköping University Press:

http://tinyurl.com/24sfh6m

It has been a wonderful adventure!

Os(c) kar

ON THE BEACH AT NIGHT ALONE

ON THE BEACH AT NIGHT ALONE

by: Walt Whitman

On the beach at night alone

As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future.

A vast similitude interlocks all,
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,
All distances of place however wide,
All distances of time, all inanimate forms,
All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in different worlds,
All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes,
All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,
All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe,
All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future,
This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann’d,
And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.