Life Histories As Ways To Reconstruct The Teaching Identities

Author(s):

Analia Leite(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2012

Network:

10. Teacher Education Research

Format:

Paper

Session Information

10 SES 02 C, Parallel Paper Session

Parallel Paper Session

Time:

2012-09-18

15:15-16:45

Room:

ESI 1 - Aula 36

Chair:

Vivienne Griffiths

Contribution

This research took place withing the thesis titled: life histories of teachers. The construction of identities: personal life, work and professional career.

The main theme of this research was based on the reconstruction and colaborative elaboration of two life histories. a male teacher with over fifty years of experience and a female teacher, just retired with over forty years of work experience, and this meant a career of historical, social political and pedagogical trajectory. This path has led to the global recuperation of the teaching strategy in primary school, as well as the comprehension of the complex configuration of teaching identities.

Life histories open a field of infinite possibilities and since Grumet, the biographical method is “a process of restitution” that gives back the experience “to the person that lived it” (1981: 110, cited by Rudduck, 1999: 135). To be able to narrate in the first person the experience to the others is a process of mutual restitution. Even the narrator and the public can get the experience about the historical and social moments that took place and were told. The two cases analysed are of vital importance due to the teaching experiences and diversed political trajectory (about the historical moments experience: dictatorship, transition, democracy) socio-cultural (changes of values, interests, technnological progress, woman role, family idea) educational and curricular (diverse educational reforms, school spaces, time managemente).

In this way and following Goodson ideas (2004), the teaching accounts can connect again with “context stories” (page 33) and not only to reconstruct the teaching activity but also to produce new comprehension of this political and social situation. the frame of reference was based on to main axes: the identities from different perspectives; sociological, political, educational and psicological (Dubar, 2002; Wenger, 2001; Giddens, 1995; Gergen, 1992, 1996; Day,2006,2006b) and a genealogy of the spanish teaching studies that will allow setting the ways of living to understand the frames and political, historical and social environments of the educational project; the meanings and functions at the leve of two national states (Rivas, 2004; Dubet, 2006; Varela, 1984, 1994; Lerena, 1989; Viñao, 2004; Davini, 1997)

The identity is understood as the continuous process, not finished, in constant transformation, sometimes stable, but it can assume different visions depending on the contextual situation of the person, the history, the epoch, the work, the relationships with others, what it also implies to realise that it is a social construction and not exclusively individual.

Method

The inmersion process in a teacher’s life went through three stages: the first one, the opening and open story through interviews, the second of co-elaboration of their own life histories, and the third one the colaboration on the discussion process of analysis of categories and interpretation. In the three processes already mentioned, the work has been done with all the information available, that is, transcriptions from each interview, drafts from the different versions of life stories, historical documents, official, personal and schemes from the different analysis categories that emerged in the various moments of the research process. The possibility to work with the documents available modifies sustancially the relationship with the main characters because it generates a working space and a discussion more than a request about the extraction of information. This way generated a continuous work related to the search of information, historical registers about centres and places that were part of their lifes as teachers (some of then do not exist anymore, and others have been transformed) and an opening of our main characters due to the rich information they offered (pictures, certificates, degrees). Since Van Manen (2003), the methodological process has conjugated three ways of approximation: holistical, selective and detailed.

Expected Outcomes

In the analysis and interpretation of the life histories four units were recognised related to the conformation of the teaching identities: -the initial mark on the life of teachers gives an account of the complex process of imbrication between the children school experience, the teaching at the school of education, the experience as a teacher and the personal life. -the classroom as a space of the teaching life that gives an account of the daily experience, this as a teacher can become an accelerator, detonator or blocking agent of the changes: personal, professional and of future projection. -he intersection of ways from the gender, life and teaching experience, which gives an account of the personal dimension in the construction of the teaching identities. Being a man or a woman in the teaching environment gives raise differences and concordances that will affect the sense of the work and the meaning of the working and personal relationships. -the paradoxes of teaching knowledge, gives an account of the historical and social frame in which A. and P. constituted. In this frame the ways of affirmation/negation to the knowledge, the value of knowledge and the epistemological traditions were translated in a complex plot of the teaching experience of knowledge

References

-Davini, María Cristina (1997): La formación docente en cuestión: política y pedagogía. Buenos Aires: Paidós. -Day, Christopher (2006): Pasión por enseñar. La identidad personal y profesional del docente y sus valores. Madrid: Narcea. -Dubar, Claude (2002): La crisis de identidades. La interpretación de una mutación. Barcelona: Edicions Bellaterra. -Dubet, Francois (2006): El declive de la institución. Barcelona: Gedisa. -Gee, James P. (2000): “Identity as an Analytic Lens Research in Education”, Review of Research in Education, 25, pp. 99-125. -Gergen, Kenneth, J. (1996): Realidades y Relaciones. Aproximaciones a la construcción social. Barcelona: Paidós. -Giddens, Anthony (1995): Modernidad e identidad del yo: el yo y la sociedad en la época contemporánea. Barcelona: Península. -Goodson, Ivor F. (2004): Historias de vida del profesorado. Barcelona: Octaedro –Eub. -Lerena, Carlos (1989): “El oficio de maestro (Posición y papel del profesorado de primera enseñanza en España)”. En Ortega, Félix; González García, Ernesto; Guerrero, Antonio y Sánchez, Maria Eduvigis (comp.): Manual de Sociología de la Educación. Madrid: Visor. -Nias, Jennifer (1989): Primary teachers talking: A study of teaching as work. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. -Rivas Flores, J. Ignacio (2004): “¿Cómo enseñar a los que enseñan?. Introducción a la evaluación de la deformación y formación del profesorado.”. En Guerrero López, J. Francisco y Pérez Galán, Rafael (coord.) La pizarra mágica. Una visión diferente de la historia de la educación. Málaga: Aljibe. Pp. 265-281 -Rudduck, Jean (1999): Innovación y Cambio. Sevilla: Publicaciones M.C.E.P. -Van Manen, Max (2003): Investigación educativa y experiencia vivida. Barcelona: Idea Books. -Varela, Julia y Ortega Félix (1984): El aprendiz de maestro. Un análisis sociológico de los estudiantes de magisterio del distrito universitario de Madrid. Madrid: Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia. Centro de Investigación y Documentación Educativa. -Viñao, Antonio (2004): Escuela para todos. Educación y modernidad en la España del siglo XX. Madrid: Marcial Pons Historia. -Wenger, Etienne (2001): Comunidades de práctica. Aprendizaje, significado e identidad. Barcelona: Paidós.

Author Information

Analia Leite (presenting / submitting)

Universidad de Málaga, Spain

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