Service learning as a third space in pre-service teacher education

This paper takes up the notion that service learning might be understood as a 'third space' (Bhabha, 1990, 1994; Soja, 1996) in teacher education. In work with young people designated as 'at risk' in and out of school, the metaphor of the third space evokes a hybrid, in-between, disruptive space that can operate to disturb normative or deficit perceptions and to disrupt pre-service teacher subjectivities. The 'third space' also draws attention to the centrality of embodied space and place in pedagogical encounters. This paper describes three of the service learning strands in the suite of opportunities available to secondary pre-service teacher at the University of Western Sydney, and, using participant reflections on these placements as data, it begins to trace material and metaphoric articulations of third space in teacher education.