Transpositional Spaces and the Process of Becoming-Educator: A Cartography of International Student Teaching Experiences

This poststructural qualitative study examined the effects of the International Student Teaching experience on student/teacher subjectivity. Using qualitative methods such as interviewing, field observations, daily audio and written journals, blogs, a/r/tography, arts-based analysis, and social media interactions, this research examined the nomadic shifts and changes in personal and professional subjectivity that American, preservice, international student/teachers experienced during a five-week International Student Teaching experience offered at sites in Chennai, India, and San Jose, Costa Rica. As a conceptual framing device, this study engaged the theories of post-humanist philosopher Rosi Braidotti (2006, 2011), exploring her concepts of “nomadic subjectivity,” “transpositions,” and “becomings” in relation to study abroad and International Student Teaching. Positioning the international student/teacher as a “nomadic subject” (Braidotti, 2006, 2011) in a transpositional learning space in the process of “becoming” (Braidotti, 2006, 2011), this study created a cartographic rendering of a material, affective learning space where participants become multiple, nomadic, rhizomatic subjects who experience the world differently in a relational, cultural, embodied, and embedded way. This study positioned International Student Teaching as a profound, transformative experience that influenced students’ personal and professional subjectivity and prepared student/teachers to affirmatively engage with a diversity of the multicultural, multilingual students and classrooms.