In teacher education we have many practices building on stories. Learning from each other’s stories in teacher educators’ professional learning is not only very common, but also a preferred way of learning (Czerniawski et al., 2017; MacPhail et al., 2019). And we tell our stories everywhere, all from the line in front of the coffee machine to the international conferences we visit. We inquire and discuss our own stories and one another’s, while we reflect on the choices made (Jordan et al., 2022; Ping et al., 2018). Less discussed is what more-than-human relationality does/produces in these stories on professional learning. Teacher educators’ stories can involve both human (e.g. colleagues and students) and non-human (e.g. space, teaching materials, books), but that the material and people’s relationships to the material as agents have received little attention. Haraway (2016, p. 97) inspires about thinking more-than-human relationality and decentring the human, in both telling and listening to stories, when she describes that “human and not … in all our bumptious diversity …relate, know, think, world and tell stories through and with other stories, worlds, knowledges, thinkings and yearnings. …Other words for this might be materialism, …ecology, sympoiesis, …situated knowledges …”. This inspiration frames our listening to more-than-human relationality in teacher educators’ stories.

In this study, we zoom in on stories on experiencing collaborative professional learning from twelve teacher educators in a Nordic context. We attentively listened to their stories during workshops on professional learning with an aesthetic approach, and during interviews about the teacher educators’ individual experiences with professional learning through their careers. This study explores the collaborative practice of teacher educators’ professional learning with an aesthetic approach. More specific how an affirmative notion of critique in this exploration can contribute to new insights in what an aesthetic approach sets in motion and opens for in new practices of becoming-professional. Teacher educators’ professional learning is in this study addressed as becoming-professional in order to emphasize the continuity and performativity of the process of professional learning (cf. Deleuze & Guattari, 1988). 

In this article we will situate the stories outlined above in new materialist and affirmative critical perspectives. By tracing more-than-human relational tensions in the stories and look further to see how this opens for in new practices of becoming-professional in different directions. This leads to our research question: To what variation of directions can more-than-human relational tensions in teacher educators’ experiences with professional learning with an aesthetic approach lead. 

To look more deeply at what is happening in the more-than-human relationality in the stories the teacher educators tell, we engage with Donna Haraway’s notion of sympoiesis, which she in ‘Staying with the trouble’ describes as “a simple word; it means “making-with” … a proper word to complex, dynamic, responsive, situated, historical systems” (Haraway, 2016, p. 58). We see making-with as a rudimentary process in how telling about experiences become stories with all more-than human present. From a new materialism, with a “relational ontology and ongoing process in which matter and meaning are co-constituted” (Bozalek & Zembylas, 2017, p. 65), perspective we use the argument that we know nothing of the stories until we know what the agents in the stories can do (van der Tuin & Dolphijn, 2010, p. 169). Tensions in the perspective of more-than-human relationality come from different angles in the analysis, both from the teacher educator, the material, and the researchers. With an affirmative critical perspective all these angles might “affirm, support and encourage something” in the tensions which will open up for exploration of a variety of new practices of becoming-professional (Raffnsøe et al., 2022, p. 196).

The empirical material for this article is based on interviews with - and letters from teacher educators on professional learning after they participated in a series of workshops (four in total) on teacher educators’ professional learning with an aesthetic approach. Two of the workshops’ empirical material is also included in the analysis. Central questions we worked with in these workshops were; ‘What is going on/ happening in this picture’, ‘What do you see what makes you say that?’ (Hailey et al., 2015) as well as a practical assignment based on; ‘Tell me something I can see’. In the workshops called ‘practice-dialogues’ teacher educators explored how theme’s like create, play, tell, were a part of their practice by interviewing each other. The teacher educators work in a Nordic context, and some bring with them experiences from West-European contexts into the stories. My role as a researcher in this study is also partly a participating role, I participate in the workshops and engage in the storytelling, which lead to the stories of the collaboration in the group of teacher educators. The multifaceted, thinking and attentive, role makes it clear why also the angle of the researcher is emphasized in the affirmative critical analysis of the stories (Østern et al., 2021). The performative characteristics of sympoiesis carries further to Donna Haraway’s notion on string figures, which is used to analyse the stories the teacher educators tell about their experiences, stories from their practices and reflections on those. String Figuring as a practice and a process, involves a method of tracing which invites to responsiveness, “passing on and receiving, making and unmaking, picking up threads and dropping them” (Haraway, 2016, p. 3). The next step in the analysis is the affirmative critical analysis which will take the tensions found in the first step as a starting point towards to open up for a multiplicity of stories (Raffnsøe et al., 2022).

The preliminary analysis suggests that there are more-than-human relational tensions in the the teacher educators’ stories on their teaching practises and practises of professional learning. The analysis indicates (string figure) patterns related to the teacher educator’s capacity of responding to the in/tangibility of the experiences and encounters in the more-than-human relations in their experiences. This might imply that teacher educators strive to affirm their experiences/encounters with some of the activities and materials (Raffnsøe et al., 2022, p. 204). It will be of interest to look deeper into the teacher educator’s capacity to respond (response-ability) towards the relations in their stories (Bozalek & Zembylas, 2017; Haraway, 2016). To take the discussion to a last step in this affirmative critique, we benefit from the characteristic that an affirmative critique “adds, invents and dreams” (Raffnsøe et al., 2022, p. 202). A new story will be told in which there is space for (a) new practice(s) of becoming-professional. Since teacher educators in Europe are clear about their needs for professional learning and their preference for being with peers in the process (Czerniawski et al., 2017; MacPhail et al., 2019; Ping et al., 2018), the implication of this study can open for new ways of collaborative becoming- professional for teacher educators both in- and outside of the Nordic context. The focus for the conference presentation is presenting the new story where more-than-human relationality gives space to intangibility in becoming-professional. The affirmative critical analysis and discussion, which showed the way in storying about becoming-professional, will also be presented. Further we discuss the implications for teacher education.

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