"This book explores the generative power of vulnerabilities facing individuals who inhabit educational spaces. We argue that vulnerability can be an asset in developing understandings of others, and in interrogating the self. Explorations of vulnerability offer a path to building empathy and creating engaged generosity within a community of dissensus. This kind of self-examination is essential in a selfie society in which democratic participation often devolves into neoliberal silos of discourse and marginalization of others who look, think, and believe differently.

By vulnerability we mean the experiences that have the potential to compromise our livelihood, beliefs, values, emotional and mental states, sense of self-worth, and positioning within the Habermasian system/lifeworld as teachers and learners. We can refer to this as microvulnerability-that is, those things humans encounter in daily life that make us aware of the illusion of control. The selfie becomes an analogy for the posturing of a particular self that reinforces how one hopes to be understood by others.

What are the vulnerabilities teachers and learners face? And how can we joker, as Norris calls it, the various vulnerabilities that we inherently bring into teaching and learning spaces? In light of the divisive discourses around the politics of Ferguson, Charlie Hebdo, ISIS, Ebola, Surveillance, and Immigration; vulnerability offers an entry way into exhuming the humanity necessary for a participatory democracy that is often hijacked by a selfie mentality."

Prelude.- Detailed Contents.- Introduction: Vulnerability in Teaching and Learning: A Rethinking.- Antagonizing the Mirror: Explorations of Vulnerability.- What We Have to Fear Is.- Is Fear Itself.- Vulnerability in a Selfie Society.- Teaching and Learning Vulnerability.- Seeing Humanity: Democratic Engagement.- Democratic Engagement.- Schooling for a Democracy.- Our Selfies, Warts and All.- Conclusion.- Case Studies Reinscribing Vulnerability in Education: The Collective Works of Vulnerable Educators.- Case 1: Like the Faces of Janus: Vulnerability as a Transformational Third Space.- Purpose and Context.- The Faces of Vulnerability in Stories of a Friend.- Lessons Learned: Subjective Reconstruction and Witnessing.- Case 2: Induction: From the I to the We.- Artifacts and Stories.- Induction as Learning Group Norms.- Participation vs. Retreat.- Sharing Stories.- Investment and Risk.- Caring.- Being Vulnerable as Teachers and Scholars.- Vulnerability with Colleagues.- Organic vs. Prescribed Mentorship.- Compromise.- Conclusion.- Case 3: Never Until: A Poem on Trauma, Teaching, and Caring.- Case 4: Pema and Me: Reflections on Failing.- Prologue.- A Dialogue with Pema.- Epilogue.- Case 5: Burning the Candle at Both Ends: Family and Profession Interconnections.- Jane's Story: The Graduate Student.- Cheri's Story.- Aaron's Story: Self-Consumption.- Discussion.- Case 6: Both Sides Now: A Deconstruction of Understanding and Misunderstanding.- Standing.- Standing, Understanding, and Overstanding.- Conclusion.- Case 7: What Does It Mean to Be Human?.- Cheri.- Conclusion: Reframing the Mirror.- Appendix: A Reflection.- About the Authors.