This dissertation explores how coloniality and global white supremacy are both sustained and countered through policies, practices, and relationships that shape the recruitment, education, and employment of future elementary teachers in Senegal. I analyze stories that are told about, to, and by student-teachers in Senegal, drawing on data from 10 months of ethnographic research at two regional teacher education centers, qualitative data generated online, newspaper articles, and policy and policy-related texts. Adopting an approach to critical policy analysis (CPA) that rethinks CPA with theories of de/coloniality (Pillow, 2017b) and global white supremacy (Pierre, 2020), I examine how the relational, affective, intellectual, and material dispositions (Stein et al., 2020) in these stories sustain – and in some cases – counter coloniality. Using a framework I call “policies as storytelling,” I retell stories about teacher recruitment, education, and employment (TREE) policies. I explore the methodological implications of this approach through tracing my own connectivities (Rhee, 2021) as a white, settler, U.S.-American woman to this research and positioning myself as an “unreliable narrator” of these stories to trouble the omniscient and authoritative role often embodied by researchers. I describe how engaging in the pedagogy of pausing (Patel, 2016) has been essential to this research and invite readers to join me in pausing. Drawing on narrative inquiry (Kim, 2016) and Indigenous storytelling methodologies (Archibald, 2008; Smith, 1999), I use a four-party storytelling pattern adapted from Tachine (2022) to retell stories about, to, and by student-teachers. I introduce the concept of “maîtrocités” to refer to the systemic monsters that haunt the role of “teacher” and are enabled by coloniality, racism, and global capitalism within Senegalese TREE systems.Findings show how the maîtrocités of superiority and alienation are sustained and countered by student-teachers, teacher educators, education leaders, and others – such as educational planners and staff at national, international and transnational institutions – whose work impacts TREE in Senegal. For both superiority and alienation, I trace (1) their historical roots in and enduring connections with French colonialism, (2) how these maîtrocités continue to haunt the experiences of current student-teachers, (3) how student-teachers are schooled, or socialized, into normalizing the existence of superiority and alienation in the teaching profession, and (4) how student-teachers, teacher educators, and others counter these maîtrocités through engaging in acts of disruption, refusal, and resistance. These findings illustrate how seemingly benign educational practices are inseparable from global ideas of race and coloniality and provide examples of how some are learning and teaching otherwise. In order to support the process (un)learning of these maîtrocités, I introduce the concept of desk spirit murdering, which draws on the work of Arendt (1966, 2020) and Love (2016, 2019) to describe the actions that people take – often from the comfort of their desks and as part of their work with policies, bureaucracies, financing, and development – that create the conditions that lead to the spirit-murdering of people in schools. These findings also illustrate how educators regularly counter maîtrocités by relating, feeling, knowing, or resourcing in ways that disrupt, refuse, or resist coloniality. Drawing on theoretical work on de/coloniality, I argue that these responses challenge common conceptions of resistance in school settings – which are themselves founded on colonial ways of knowing, doing, and being – and draw attention to the many ways in which people respond to coloniality through feeling and relating “otherwise.” In this dissertation, I seek to move towards “hospicing” (Andreotti et al., 2015) TREE policies by attending to what they can teach us about how coloniality and global white supremacy are sustained and countered, and aim to influence public and private conversations about teachers and their work.
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