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  • © 2017

Becoming-Teacher

A Rhizomatic Look at First-Year Teaching

  • This book presents an empirical study utilizing Deleuzian and Deleuzoguattarian concepts to investigate the process of constructing practice in the first year of teaching
  • This book presents an in-depth look into the actual process of beginning teachers’ translation of their pre-professional learning into practice, showing that the relationship between teacher learning and practice is non-linear and mediated by multiple other elements of an “assemblage
  • This book presents a conceptualization of teaching as collectively produced by a constellation of factors and the interactions that occur between them, thus pushing back on the dominant, simplistic neoliberal view of teaching and efforts to “grade” teachers and teacher preparation programs based on student test scores

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xiii
  2. Thinking Rhizomatically in an Era of Neoliberalism

    • Kathryn J. Strom, Adrian D. Martin
    Pages 1-10
  3. Social Justice Pedagogy and Beginning Teachers

    • Kathryn J. Strom, Adrian D. Martin
    Pages 11-24
  4. Rhizomatic Inquiry

    • Kathryn J. Strom, Adrian D. Martin
    Pages 25-40
  5. Teaching-Assemblages

    • Kathryn J. Strom, Adrian D. Martin
    Pages 41-58
  6. Molar and Molecular Activity

    • Kathryn J. Strom, Adrian D. Martin
    Pages 59-78
  7. Disrupting the Status Quo Through Lines of Flight

    • Kathryn J. Strom, Adrian D. Martin
    Pages 79-98
  8. Using Rhizomatics to Think Differently about Teaching

    • Kathryn J. Strom, Adrian D. Martin
    Pages 99-111
  9. Putting Rhizomatics to Work

    • Kathryn J. Strom, Adrian D. Martin
    Pages 113-127
  10. Back Matter

    Pages 129-138

About this book



This book presents an empirical study utilizing Deleuzian Dominant conceptions in the field of education position teacher development and teaching as linear, cause and effect transactions completed by teachers as isolated, autonomous actors. Yet rhizomatics, an emergent non-linear philosophy created by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, offers a perspective that counters these assumptions that reduce the complexity of classroom activity and phenomena. In Becoming-Teacher: A Rhizomatic Look at First-Year Teaching, Strom and Martin employ rhizomatics to analyze the experiences of Mauro, Bruce, and June, three first-year science teachers in a highly diverse, urban school district. Reporting on the ways that they constructed their practices during the first several months of entry into the teaching profession, authors explore how these teachers negotiated their pre-professional learning from an inquiry and social-justice oriented teacher residency program with their own professional agendas, understandings, students, and context. Across all three cases, the work of teaching emerged as jointly produced by the activity of multiple elements and simultaneously shaped by macro- and micropolitical forces. This innovative approach to investigating the multiple interactions that emerge in the first year of teaching provides a complex perspective of the role of preservice teacher learning and the non-linear processes of becoming-teacher. Of interest to teachers, teacher educators, and education researchers, the cases discussed in this text provide theoretically-informed analyses that highlight means of supporting teachers in enacting socially-just practices, interrupting a dominant educational paradigm detrimental to students and teachers, and engaging with productive tools to theorize a resistance to the neoliberal education movement at the classroom level.





Authors and Affiliations

  • California State University, East Bay, USA

    Kathryn J. Strom

  • New Jersey City University, USA

    Adrian D. Martin

Bibliographic Information

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access