Teacher professionalism as a ‘site of struggle’: L1 teachers’ work and creating alternative understandings of professional identity

Submitted by: Fleur Diamond
Abstract: Fleur Diamond – Faculty of Education, Monash University, Australia.
Fleur.Diamond@monash.edu
Scott Bulfin -- Faculty of Education, Monash University, Australia.
Scott.Bulfin@monash.edu
Graham Parr -- Faculty of Education, Monash University, Australia.
Graham.Parr@monash.edu

Proposed symposium:

Keywords: professionalism; L1; English teaching; identity; praxis; becoming.
As governments across the globe seek to position their workforce as competitive in an internationalised knowledge economy, they have looked to education to deliver a more literate, highly skilled population. The result has been a series of reforms to education, teacher education, and teacher accountability that reshape understandings of the purposes of education. This has had an impact on the composition of teacher professional identity (Ball; 2003; 2015; 2016; Biesta, 2015; Sahlberg, 2011/2015). Teacher professional standards, and reforms to teacher education, have mobilised a powerful set of discourses about what it means to be a teacher. As literacy is understood to be a predictor of later success in the ‘fast capitalist’ world, there has also been an intense focus by governments and their instrumentalities on L1 education and the practice of L1 teaching.
In L1 education, the dual focus on reforming teacher professionalism and prescribing curriculum and assessment means that L1 teachers in particular are subject to intense scrutiny of their practice. Standardised tests and high stakes assessments have worked to privilege the aspects of literacy that can be quantified and rendered into ‘data’. The combined effect of these developments in the education landscape has meant that L1 teachers are increasingly held responsible for the successful delivery of a range of edu-polices and accountability mechanisms. Positioned within frameworks that focus on the competency-based and technical aspects of teacher professionalism, L1 teachers also work with other commitments derived from ethical investments, relationships, practice histories, and the different priorities inscribed in L1 subjects.
This symposium draws on work by Stephen Ball (2003; 2015; 2016) in which he proposes subjectivity as a ‘site of struggle’ in an era of neo-liberal reforms to teacher professionalism and identity. Drawing on work by Mikhail Bakhtin (1981) on identity formation as a continuous “ideological becoming” in the “zones of contact” between competing discourses, these papers offer analyses of the work of L1 English educators who are negotiating alternative understandings of their practice and identity. Focusing on aspects of practice and identity connected to critical thinking, creativity, and meaning-making in dialogic praxis, the papers in this symposium present the various ways in which L1 educators enact alternative understandings of teacher professionalism.
References:
Bakhtin, M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays (C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Trans.). Austin: University of Texas Press.
Ball, S. (2003). The teacher’s soul and the terrors of performativity. Journal of Education Policy. 18(2), pp. 215 – 228. DOI: 10.1080/0268093022000043065
Ball, S. (2015). Education, governance and the tyranny of numbers. Journal of Education Policy. 30(3), pp. 299 – 301. DOI: 10.1080/02680939.2015.1013271
Ball, S. (2016). Subjectivity as a site of struggle: Refusing neoliberalism? British Journal of the Sociology of Education. 37:8, 1129-1146, DOI: 10.1080/01425692.2015.1044072

Biesta, G. (2015). What is education for? On good education, teacher judgement and educational professionalism. European Journal of Education, 50(1), 75 – 87. DOI: 10.1111/ejed.12109
Sahlberg, P. (2011/2015). Finnish lessons 2.0: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland? Second Edition. New York: Teachers College Press.

The becoming of early career L1 teachers: The negotiation of neoliberal policy and language in everyday work

Ceridwen Owen – Faculty of Education, Monash University, Australia

Ceridwen.Owen@monash.edu

Keywords: everyday practices; L1; becoming

Over the last three decades in Australia neoliberal approaches to education policy have led to increases in teacher, student and school accountability, a preference for outcomes that are amenable to quantifiable and benchmarked measurement, and the standardisation of teaching and learning. In part, this is due to the global focus on developing a knowledge economy, where knowledge is an asset to be produced and distributed. The economisation of education, and the neoliberal approach to education policy, has led to the language of education being framed by a discourse of individual accountability, surveillance and achievement.

This paper reports on a study examining the “everyday practices” (de Certeau, 1984) of early career L1 teachers in public secondary schools in Victoria, Australia, and how their work is mediated by neoliberal policy and language. The study is working with a group of early career L1 teachers across a number of schools through observations, focus groups and interviews, and the generation of various texts. This paper argues that understanding the everyday negotiations of early career L1 teachers provides a lens for examining social structures, settings and arrangements. As Mills (2000) positions “neither the life of an individual not the history of a society can be understood without understanding both”, and that the “larger historical scene” has meaning due to the “inner life of individuals”.

Drawing from the Bakhtinian concept of heteroglossia (Bakhtin, 1981), this paper examines the way that early career L1 teachers are negotiating with, and appropriating, the language of institutions in their everyday work. The process of negotiation is the “art of using” (de Certeau, 1984) that which is imposed by institutions. The “art of using” is the tactics that individuals use to carve out a place within institutional systems that attempt to frame their work in particular ways. Through negotiating with, and appropriating, the language of schools and policy, early career L1 teachers are using that which is imposed to meet their needs and values in relation to L1 education.

References:

Bakhtin, M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays (C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Trans.). Austin: University of Texas Press.
de Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life (S. Rendall, Trans.). California, USA: University of California Press.
Mills, C. W. (2000). The sociological imagination. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Cultural Memory and L1 Teaching: late career teachers and teacher professional identity
Fleur Diamond – Faculty of Education, Monash University
Scott Bulfin – Faculty of Education, Monash University
Graham Parr -- Faculty of Education, Monash University
Fleur.Diamond@monash.edu
Scott.Bulfin@monash.edu
Graham.Parr@monash.edu
Keywords: L1 teaching; professionalism; teacher identity; cultural memory; practice histories
The current policy landscape with respect to teacher accreditation and professionalism emphasises the technical and performative aspects of teaching practice (Ball, 2003; 2015; 2016). There is increasing evidence that due to global ‘policy travel’, a standards-based reform agenda in education has ushered in significant reforms to how teacher professionalism is accredited and understood across a range of national contexts (Sahlberg, 2011/2015). In relation to L1 English teachers’ work in particular, curriculum and assessment has been subject to intense regularisation, scrutiny, and measurement through such mechanisms as high-stakes testing and the ‘datafication’ of literacy (Gibbons, 2017). The combined effect of these policy changes includes significant shifts in how L1 teacher professionalism and professional identity are understood, with implications for how L1 teaching is practised.
The wide-ranging effects of standards based reforms mean that many aspects of current educational policy have become naturalised as ‘the way things are’, rather than a product of struggles over the meaning, purpose and direction of education (Biesta, 2015; Gibbons, 2017). Therefore, it is timely to study the personal-professional biographies and practices of late-career and retired L1 teachers for what their careers can reveal about changes in teacher professionalism and professional identity over time.
Using the framework of ‘cultural memory theory’ (Hirsch and Smith, 2002), the paper reports on how individual memories of teaching careers intersect with the more public narratives of educational change over time. Based on one-on-one interviews and focus groups with late career L1 English teachers, the study develops knowledge about how teacher professionalism and L1 teacher identity have been constituted from the 1970s until the present day. Findings show that participatory, democratic understandings of teachers’ role in public life and curriculum change were more prominent in earlier formations of teacher professionalism. Particularly suggestive findings for current practice are the importance of an intellectual life, and activities that can be categorised as ‘care of the profession’. The paper suggests that, going beyond mere nostalgia, the cultural memory of L1 teaching can form a resource for alternative, more agentive understandings of teacher professionalism and professional identity for the future.
References:
Ball, S. (2003). The teacher’s soul and the terrors of performativity. Journal of Education Policy. 18(2), pp. 215 – 228. DOI: 10.1080/0268093022000043065
Ball, S. (2015). Education, governance and the tyranny of numbers. Journal of Education Policy. 30(3), pp. 299 – 301. DOI: 10.1080/02680939.2015.1013271
Ball, S. (2016). Subjectivity as a site of struggle: Refusing neoliberalism? British Journal of the Sociology of Education. 37:8, 1129-1146, DOI: 10.1080/01425692.2015.1044072

Biesta, G. (2015). What is education for? On good education, teacher judgement and educational professionalism. European Journal of Education, 50(1), 75 – 87. DOI: 10.1111/ejed.12109

Gibbons, S. (2017). English and its teachers: A history of policy, pedagogy and practice. Abingdon: Routledge/NATE.

Sahlberg, P. (2011/2015). Finnish lessons 2.0: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland? Second Edition. New York: Teachers College Press.

Resources for constructing L1 English teacher identity: Balancing curriculum and policy imperatives with personal philosophies of L1 teaching.

Kelli McGraw
Queensland University of Technology

kelli.mcgraw@qut.edu.au

Keywords: L1; teaching; English; agency; identity; becoming


Since 1999 every curriculum for L1 English in Australia has been broadened from their initial focus on poetry, prose fiction and plays, to include various studies of screen and digital media. The adoption of media texts and visual analysis as core elements of an ‘English’ curriculum reflects the theoretical shift in the subject, as semiotic systems beyond linguistic expression came to be understood as ‘languages’ with ‘grammars’ of their own (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996).

This paper reports findings of an analysis of the Australian Curriculum for English (L1), and the Australian Professional Standards for Teaching, locating significant textual resources for understanding the scope of English as a school subject in Australia with a focus on the role of English teachers in developing multimodal literacies.

This paper will argue that to be a ‘professional’ teacher you must both be both accredited as one and self-identify as one. Official curriculum and standards documents offer structural resources (Archer, 2003) for both articulating and demonstrating ways of acting within the boundaries of acceptable practice for L1 teaching. Concepts and terms in these documents can cause 'pinch points' or 'permission points' for L1 teachers seeking to enact their personal philosophy of teaching, but as teachers' identities emerge, they draw on personal resources as well to shape their own bespoke identity. By contrasting analysis of the textual resources available to teachers, with artefacts from a self-study of L1 (English) teacher identity, this paper generates questions for further research into teacher philosophy and agency. L1 teacher identity, due to its interdisciplinary construction, is theorised as bricolage - a collection of views and interests on language/linguistics, literature/texts, literacy/literacies, politics and society.

References:
Archer, M. (2003). Structure, agency and the internal conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T., (1996). Reading images: The grammar of visual design. London: Routledge.