The professional significance of subjectification: Exploring the interactional presence of teachers as-a-self through the pedagogy of subjectification

Abstract

The pedagogical purpose domain of subjectification concerns encouraging students to be a self, while they encounter a pluriform world of others. However, it leaves remarkably ambiguous how teachers are concretely involved in subjectification during their everyday practice. Addressing this lacuna, we introduce teacher subjectification as an analytical perspective on how a teacher-as-a-self interactively constitutes student subjectification. Through conceptual argumentation and an exploratory vignette, we argue that teacher subjectification prompts professionally significant existential considerations about teaching, mirroring the pedagogical significance of student subjectification. Our conceptual argument explores the theoretical intertwinement of teacher subjectification and student subjectification through the key subjectification-related concepts ‘natality’, plurality’, and ‘risk’. Our exploratory vignette of a real-world classroom situation illustrates these theoretical insights. Looking ahead, we present practical ways of applying teacher subjectification to surface existential-pedagogical considerations within everyday teaching; we list our study's theoretical implications about subjectification; and we recommend further empirical explorations of teacher subjectification.