Invisible College 2025 Proposals
Invisible College for Teacher Research Theme: Dead Spaces
We invite you to join us for Invisible College.
Call for Papers:
Dear members of Invisible College for Research on Teaching,
We invite you to join us in Denver, Colorado, USA, for Invisible College.
Invisible College for Teacher Research has as its original aim to “professionalize teaching” and since then has focused on reinvigorating research on teaching (Galluzo, 1999). A non-affiliate of AERA, the Invisible College of Teacher Research Annual Meeting is held the day before the American Educational Research Association (AERA) conference. We invite you to bring and discuss problems of practice, emerging research agendas, and/or other teacher education topics including
- Methodological or pragmatic innovations
- Philosophical, theoretical, worldviews, and intellectual stances we take up in our work
- Collaborators (institutional) across colleges and countries
This years' conference theme is dead spaces. In “My Pedagogical Creed” (1897), John Dewey drew attention to the dangers of spaces that he described as “dead and dull” (p. 79). To him (1938a), dead spaces happen when “imagination…rich (ness)…growth… and connection” (p. 247) are lacking in the activities and materials that students/teachers/teacher educators use. Alienating practices of institutional spaces can create flattening of curriculum and research and dehumanizing relationships due to institutional structures and barriers.
Considering how educators might counter dead spaces, we turn again to Dewey (1933) and his thoughts on becoming “fully absorbed” (p. 32) in experience.
When a person is absorbed, the subject carries him on. Questions occur to him spontaneously; a flood of suggestions pour in on him; further inquiries and readings are indicated and followed; instead of having to use energy to hold mind to the subject….the material holds and buoys his mind up and gives onward impetus to thinking (Dewey, 1933, p. 32)
As an Invisible College whose goals were distinctly created and sustained to counter these types of alienating practices for teachers, teacher educators, and novice researchers, we invite you to consider ways Dead Spaces exist for yourself, your students, and education more broadly. We also invite you to examine and research ways in which we can aspirationally achieve better and bring these ideas to share with our colleagues.
Please submit your proposal by January 15th for consideration for the Invisible College for Research on Teaching. Proposals may follow the conference theme or be of your own choosing.
Please include the following in a word document or pdf.
Your name:
Title of Session Proposed:
Participants (names, affiliation, contacts)
Corresponding Author Name and Email:
Proposal should contain:
- 150 word Abstract of your session: (For inclusion in the Conference Program)
- < 500 word description of the session
Please share this information with colleagues that may be interested in sharing their work.
We look forward to seeing you in Denver!
Why Choose Invisible College for Teacher Research?
Invisible Colleges were initially formed as extra-institutional groups of scholars who met together to forward ideas. This year we would like to posit the theme of Dead Spaces as a reflective device that may guide our work.
Dewey (1938) described dead spaces are spaces where there is a lack of “imagination… rich(ness)... growth… and connection” in the activities in which students/teachers/teachers educators are expected to engage”.