Tesseract as Becoming: A Rhizomatic Self-Study about Engaging Future English Language Arts Teachers in Culturally Relevant Pedagogy

Abstract

Animated in poststructuralist thought, this rhizomatic self-study is an entanglement with the political, critical, and creative work of becoming. The writing is an act of experimentation1. The purpose is to pursue insights about engaging future English language arts teachers in culturally relevant pedagogy. This inquiry is situated in a predominately White institution, written by a White teacher educator, and guided by data from five years of collaboration with the Cincinnati Critical Friends group. Themes include positionality, dilemmas, memory, movement, Whiteness, dimensionality, and youth imaginaries. Driven by the post-qualitative impulse toward immanence, this study reaches toward unexplored territories through the image of the tesseract, a four-dimensional shape impossible to see in our world.