Session Information
19 SES 13, The Development of the Postmodern Professional (Part 2)
Symposium
Contribution
While being somewhat critical of postmodernism for its general dismissal of materialist perspectives, the starting point for the paper is a general acceptance of certain key elements of the postmodern condition; namely, culture, identity, discursive construction, and the importance of signifiers. These elements render any single definition of ‘teacher professionalism’ extremely problematic, and put the focus squarely on both the assertion and the subjective construction of norms and values among teachers. The paper draws on data from ethnographic research conducted by the author and colleagues during the 2000s to illustrate the dynamic between global educational discourses and local school and teacher circumstances in the micro-politics of teacher professionalism. The broad argument of the paper is that, while postmodernism has taught us that creating dualisms provides distorted views of situations and can have unrecognised pedagogical effects on constructions of reality, it is nonetheless important that researchers make distinctions between alternative, and usually multiple, perspectives. This is the essence of the deconstruction of prevailing discourses and the development of partial understandings of the complexity of social relations. Gaining insight into such complexity, is an important step in the process of challenging and subverting prevalent discourses and their material effects.
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