Experiences of vulnerability in poverty education settings : developing reflexive ethical praxis

Abstract

In Timor-Leste’s education system poverty is widespread and vulnerability is experienced by both students and teachers, entangled in the fragile web of policies and day- to-day challenges. As a teacher and researcher working in high

poverty education settings across two contexts in Timor-Leste and Australia, I have been interested in exploring my own situatedness in the policies and discourses that perpetuate and define such realities, as well as how ‘vulnerable subjectivities’ are enacted, constructed and experienced within poverty education. How can further engagement with poststructural notions of subjectivity and an autoethnographic methodology help develop praxis within poverty education? This paper uses vignettes which describe violence against students to further examine the ideas of vulnerability. In this paper I argue for a greater understanding of praxis for educators and for ethical autoethnography to be explored by more researchers as central to ethical research particularly in education and postcolonial studies.