The grey between knowings: rethinking epistemic practices and ontological possibilities in teacher education

This paper responds to the Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education editors’ call for research that engages with the politics of knowledge production in teacher education. Drawing on Chef Edward Lee’s reimagined bibimbap – a dish “already mixed inside” – I question what I call the certainty imperative: the assumption that uncertainty indicates inadequate preparation and that teachers should emerge from programmes with clear competencies and measurable readiness. Through Rivera Cusicanqui’s Ch’ixi thinking, Barad’s intra-action, Chen’s “Asia as Method,” and Stengers’ ecology of practices, I argue that the certainty imperative makes a fundamental onto-epistemic error – it assumes that what teachers know can be separated from who teachers are. The paper proceeds from the inverse assumption: that plurality precedes preparation. Pre-service teachers, like Lee, are already mixed inside with ways of knowing-being that the preparation model cannot see. Rather than offering new techniques or revised competencies, this paper reaches towards a reorientation from delivering certainty towards cultivating professional judgement that can dwell with uncertainty rather than resolve it.