This paper reckons with the educator’s role in modern education systems by using the ideas of complicity and resistance to explore the challenge of working equitably within inequitable systems. I argue that viewing complicity and resistance on a spectrum and actions in their wider social and political context helps us to understand, as educators, not only our own complicity with the oppression that modern educational systems generate but also the degree to which we are constrained in our own actions. Further, I suggest that educators work within constraints that make an individualistic view of subjectification as an educational purpose impossible and that pursuit of this may not, in turn, serve students well when they encounter constraints to freedom outside the classroom. Given this, I suggest that it is still possible to practice a form of pastoral pedagogy that prioritises engagement with the individual and uses a non-coercive approach to support autonomy for students but that this form of pedagogy additionally allows for consideration of the constraints the teacher and the student may be subject to. I use the film Woman in the Dunes (Suna No Onna, 1964) as a thinking tool for this discussion and suggest that engaging with the film allows for a form of thinking aloud on the topic of complicity, resistance and pastoral pedagogy by presenting a ‘meaningful world’ that is not reducible to simple classification nor is purely illustrative (Gibbs, 2017a; Gibbs, 2017b, p278). Encountering, via film, a completely new world and considering the parallels with more familiar educational contexts, allows for a consideration of wider ethical questions about education and the role of educators (Laugier, 2021).
Stephanie Thomson (Mon,) studied this question.