Partnerships in times of teacher education 'crises': affective atmosphere and the relational ethics of teacher educators

Neoliberal technologies of governing teacher education have created an affective atmosphere of mistrust and accountability that complicates the partnership work of teacher educators and teachers in preparing graduates for work. This chapter explores the precarious conditions of teacher education and work that have been produced by the ‘crisis’ of teacher quality and related reforms. Focusing on the experience of a teacher educator, it shows how teacher educators and teachers find a meaningful existence amidst the situation that unfolds through working in partnership. These stories of partnership work reveal the social ontology of partnership sites and educators’ professional beings that are grounded in relations of responsibility and care for others. The chapter argues that relational ethics as responsibility for another returns to subvert the neoliberal logics of partnerships and precariousness that this politics produced for teacher educators, teachers and pre-service teachers, clearing the way for shaking up the professional identities and discourses of the situation.