Like artists, teachers face situations where they must make sense of and respond to dynamic tensions. For artists, this may involve things like the interplay between light and dark, detail and blurriness, foreground and background, and, of course, the relationship of these tensions with one another. Educators may have versions of these same aesthetic problems, but unlike the artist, they occur within educational situations and can be thought of as educational tensions. Educational tensions are complex problems which involve grappling with, and possibly dialoguing between diverse or contrasting factors that matter educationally. When and how do I bring myself into my teaching, and when do I hold back from doing so? When do I quietly support a student who is lacking confidence, and when (and how) do I challenge them? When and how do I resist department and school authorities’ plans or practices? And so on.
One approach is to collapse the tensions, perhaps by concretising them into “if x, do y” algorithms. Another is to embrace the chaos by concluding that it simply a matter of ‘balance’, which often ends up being whatever compromised position one ends up taking, retroactively justified. Sometimes we surrender to an ad hoc alliance between our motivations to control and our desire to abdicate responsibility. While it is inevitable (and good) that we develop habits thinking and action that categorise similar situations together (and from which arises the possibility of categorical responses in turn), two complex situations may be similar along many key dimensions but require very different approaches. Complex dynamic situations have too many parts, ill defined parts, and are changing on their own and through our interaction with them. When to go with existing habits and when to doubt them? Another educational tension.
Getting a sense of how things hang together and develop, where they might go, and one’s place in the ecology, is an ongoing aesthetic process, and responding requires artistry. But what is required to respond with artistry, and what does it mean for teacher education programmes? Artistry too is a kind of alliance between intervening in situations and letting things be. But it is hardly ad hoc, nor can it be smothered by the word ‘balance’. Artistic resolution is not some comfy ‘it depends’. It does depend, preciously so, but sometimes the situation calls one to take risks so extreme they fall outside even the boundaries we thought defined the tension. Other times not. What guides how even this educational tension –between doing and letting be– comes together, and how to know if we have been led astray? What guides an artist? What guides a teacher?
Teacher educators might begin by telling student teachers about the complexity and need for artistry. I think this is not likely to be effective (for several reasons). Nor would simply ‘modelling’ artistry in one’s own practice suffice (also for several reasons, starting with it not being clear whether ‘modelling artistry’ is an oxymoron: to model it well, must forget we are modelling?). Both telling and modelling may be necessary, but neither are sufficient. They do not cut to the heart of the matter.
I suggest attending to the heart of educational tensions is deeply interconnected with attending to one’s heart, and that this is where teacher educators should start. The perception of an educational tension is felt as a tension in one’s body. Sitting in a problematic situation means sitting in uncomfortable feelings. Conversely, perceiving and attending to the problems that call us connect us to what we care about. Our educational tensions are not generic, and they find us.
The relationship between an educational tension we perceive and the corresponding tension we feel is the context for the possibility of artistry in teaching, but also why artistry is too often evaded. It sometimes hurts to be so called, but it is the kind of gratifying pain that draws the artist back to her easel or fretboard.
We sometimes settle on a solution that addresses the tension arising in our body rather than the situation our heart resonated with and called us to attend. We forget the cord. We deny the invitation. Sometimes this means we flee entirely, but often it means we decide some course of action is “good enough” and release ourselves from the burden of its presence. Exhaustion and fear (of uncertainty, failure, embarassment, etc) can also drive teachers (and the education system generally) towards premature resolutions. Competing pressures on time and a culture that does not value deep attention co-conspire with this drive towards goodenoughism. “Good enough” is sometimes good enough, especially when responding to tensions we face from tasks imposed but meaningless. But goodenoughism can be bad faith, a sleight of hand trick we concoct to lose contact, with our selves and with the other in a single puff of smoke, without seeing clearly that we have done so.
The kind of attitude one has towards what one works with contours the space of possibilities for engaging with it. For example, being fearful contorts how we are able to face and engage with uncertainty, whether we are willing to change opinions, ‘stick to our guns’, or be open to otherness, not to mention our stamina in holding genuine and ongoing concern for where it is all going. Unlike fear, care is an emotion/attitude that orients towards tensions differently. If we care about something, we will not settle on a solution that is simply good enough to calm us into not worrying about it. An artist that cares about a piece may rework a painting for hours and days even if they had thought it was ‘almost finished’. Artists do not aim for ‘good enough’ in what matters to them. They are guided by tensions in what they work with, and will not settle on shortcuts that anaesthetise their engagement too early. They keep themselves connected, and com-passion orients their endeavours. (This does not imply ‘perfectionism,’ which itself denies artfully encountering the tension discussed earlier, between intervening and letting things be.) The attitude artists manifest immerses good teachers too.
But why care, especially if it can lead to sleeplessness? Or if a ‘perfect’ outcome is not possible anyway? For those who fear caring, care seems like putting oneself in an unnecessarily vulnerable position. It seems like precarious sacrifice. It certainly doesn’t seem relaxing. But those who have devoted themselves to caring know the kind of beauty that can arise when participating in the ecology of the heart: that sacred feedback loop between more deeply encountering and responding to otherness, and more deeply encountering and responding our own selves. We grow as people, into new distinctions, nuances, pains and delights, as we grow more perceptive and engaged in the needs and possibilities of another. Care holds us back from overdetermining or underdetermining a situation. It has us revisit and recalibrate as our ongoing perception of the situation reforms itself.
Maybe teacher education should acknowledge and theorise such matters. More importantly, it needs to make space for student teachers to experience caring through educational tensions. For example, educational tensions arise naturally during placements. Picking up on the tension new teachers feel, mentors and others quickly try to provide solutions. If we believe care matters, then caring for a new teacher’s cares also matters. This raises its own educational tensions for the teacher educator, and along with it the possibility of heartfelt artistry.