Taking the angle of the student: Exploring the educational significance of student resistance

In a recent publication, Gert Biesta calls for taking the angle of the teacher to grasp what the teacher and teaching bring to education that is unique and beyond the capacity of the student. Biesta emphasizes the educational significance of resistance that teachers bring to interrupt the students’ being-with-oneself so that students could have the opportunity to exist as a subject in relation to the world. I take a different angle – the angle of the student – to highlight the educational significance of resistance that comes from the student which is also essential for their subjective existence. This article engages with three perspectives – critical pedagogy, the educational theory of Hannah Arendt, and the ethic of hospitality proposed by Derrida – to enrich the discussion. Overall, I argue that to be a student-subject means to engage with the dialectic between receptivity and resistance towards both the world and towards education.