Radical Love in Teacher Education Praxis: Imagining the Real Through Listening to Diverse Student Voices

Through Freire’s notion of praxis (1985, p.119) which gives centrality to critical self reflection in teaching toward social justice, in this paper I reflect on recently collected narratives gleaned from working with pre-service teachers. These stories reveal the unexpected rewards of seeking to create a prevailing culture of listening and respect for students’ unique perspectives. They also illustrate the challenges involved, in maintaining my own inward consciousness of self and place while cultivating this kind of milieu in the classroom. Within this dynamic tension in which both teacher and students learn from each other, there are tremendous possibilities to accept, affirm and confirm emerging teacher identities with the kind of sensibilities that are critically awakened to injustice and empowered as “beings of praxis” (Freire, 1985, p.112) in their own write.