Professional Identity and Practice within Turbulent School Cultures

Author(s):

Ruth BoyaskKathleen Anne Quinlivan

Conference:

ECER 2008

Network:

23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

23 SES 08B, Teacher's Work - Teacher's Training

Paper Session

Time:

2008-09-12

08:30-10:00

Room:

B1 114

Chair:

Anne Larson

Contribution

Whilst recent school improvement literature points to the critical role of teacher effectiveness for expanding learners’ opportunities for social participation and success (Lingard and Mills, 2002; Hattie, 2003), the difficulties of effecting sustainable change within schooling (see Tyack and Cuban, 1995) suggests that our idealised accounts of effective teachers (such as those identified by Muijs and Reynolds, 2005) do not readily translate into more effective teacher performance, and requires a more complex understanding of the processes involved in constructing effective pedagogies than has hitherto been the case. Recent studies of teacher and professional identity suggest that teacher subjectivity is not essentially unified and can be better characterised as either fragmented and defined in relation to multiple, perhaps contradictory, commitments (Stronach et al., 2002), or vacillating between stability and instability in response to variations in teachers’ life and work experiences (Day et al., 2006). We explore teachers’ concepts of effective teaching and classroom practice within a particularly challenging school context in light of literature that claims teacher development and performance is mitigated by context (Eraut, 2002; Day et al., 2006). However, this paper does more than explore the relationship in situ as most teaching and learning research tends to do. We also draw upon current theorising about the construction of identity within socio-political contexts (Walkerdine, 2006; Powell & Barber, 2006; Davies & Bansel, 2007), an area largely unexplored in empirical studies of classroom practice.

Method

This paper is an outcome of an action research project designed to develop teachers’ professional knowledge of subject and contextually specific literacy achievement within an ethnically diverse, poor, suburban secondary school in New Zealand. The study focused on the trial of a research-informed school improvement initiative that sought to improve writing achievement within four case study Year 10 classrooms in English, Science, Social Studies and Physical Education (developed by four teacher researchers in consultation with two university researchers) and the evaluation of the trial (led by the university researchers). Interview data, observations, journal writing and student work has been thematically coded and analysed to reveal interrelationships between teacher identity and performance.

Expected Outcomes

Building upon current assumptions about teacher subjectivities, our analysis shows not only how the challenges of constructing effective pedagogies are intensified within school contexts of significant social disadvantage, but also demonstrates how circumstances shape notions of effectiveness. Teachers who are engaged in a continual and critical revision of “effectiveness” within the specific situation of their classrooms may be better placed to purposefully support positive learning outcomes within school cultures that are also dynamic and turbulent than teachers who feel bound to enact stable, general or consistent effective pedagogies. We suggest there may be especially negative implications for learning when there is a schism between teachers’ explicit concepts of effective teaching pedagogies, oftentimes defined in relation to external accountabilities, and their implicit responses to socio-political contestations within schooling contexts of turbulence and change.

References

Davies, B. & Bansel, P. (2007). Neoliberalism and Education, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education (QSE), 20 (3), 247-259 Day, C., Kington, A., Stobart, G. and Sammons, P., 2006. The personal and professional selves of teachers: stable and unstable identities. British Educational Research Journal, 32(4), 601-616. Eraut, M. (2002) Menus for Choosy Diners, Teachers and Teaching, 8 (3/4), 371-80. Hattie, J. (2003, October). Teachers make a difference: What is the research evidence? Paper presented at the Australian Council for Educational Research Annual Conference on Building Teacher Quality, Melbourne. Lingard, B., & Mills, M. (2002, October). Teachers and school reform: Aligning the message systems. Paper presented at the New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER) conference “Teachers make a difference: What is the research evidence?”, Wellington. Muijs, D. Reynolds, D. Effective Teaching, Evidence and Practice. Second Edition. London: Sage, 2005. Powell, L.C & Barber, M. (2006). Savage Inequalities Indeed. Irrationality and Urban School Reform. In Boldt, G.M & Salvio, P.M (Eds.) Love’s Return. Psychoananalytic Essays on Childhood, Teaching and Learning. London: Routledge. Stronach, I., Corbin, C., McNamara, O., Stark, S., & Warne, T. (2002). Towards an uncertain politics of professionalism: teacher and nurse identities in flux. Journal of Educational Policy, 27 (2), 109–138. Tyack, D. B., & Cuban, L. (1995). Tinkering toward utopia: A century of public school reform. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Walkerdine, V. (2006) Workers in the New Economy: Transformation as Border Crossing, Ethos, 34 (1), 10–41.

Author Information

Ruth Boyask

University of Plymouth

Faculty of Education

Exmouth

Kathleen Anne Quinlivan

University of Canterbury

School of Educational Studies and Human Development

Christchurch

162

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