2018 AERA Presidential AddressDiscretionary Spaces: The Power of Teaching in the Struggle for Justice in and Through Public Education

Although teaching is one of the most common occupations, experienced by nearly all individuals and enacted by millions of professionals, its power to reproduce or disrupt oppression is often underestimated. Situated within broader social, political, and historical contexts, teaching reflects and is shaped by enduring patterns that marginalize groups of people, forms of knowledge, and ways of knowing. Yet this is not only a macro-level phenomenon; through everyday micro-interactions, teaching can nurture students’ flourishing or constrain their learning and identities. Building on scholarship on discretion in professional practice and policy implementation, I argue that teaching’s potency derives in significant part from the discretionary spaces inherent in its enactment. These spaces of interpretation, choice, and action are both ubiquitous and structured by broader systems of oppression. By conceptualizing discretion as both a risk and a resource, this analysis advances theoretical understandings of teaching and underscores the ethical, political, and educational stakes of teachers’ work, pointing to an expanded role for professional education.