Transcript Competing professional identities

Competing professional
identities
Competing professional
identities
Teacher identity is contingent upon how the child is
Understood (Comber & Cormack, 1996, p.3).
Competing professional
identities
Teachers and children are in reciprocal relationship, they
are part of a Standard Relational Pair (Eglin & Hester,
1992)
Methodology
Critical discourse analysts begin with an interest in
understanding, uncovering, and transforming conditions of
inequality (Rogers, 2004, p.369).
Questions
•What discourses of teacher/child relationships are evident
in the interviews?
•How are teachers and children positioned within these
discourses?
•What teacher identities do they create?
•How have these discourses come about?
Methodology
Language as the ‘place’ to begin study of identity.
When we speak we are building identities as we put the ‘I’
into our stories.
When we write we ‘select’ ideas and ways of presenting
them
Some examples:
Analysing the interviews
What did the analysis enable me to ‘see’?
The stories we tell
• 2.36 Ray:
But one thing I also learnt is when you’re positive with
children you get the results whereas if you’re negative and you don’t
expect much from them that’s when you don’t get anything whereas
positive comments, positive reinforcement, everything, it just works. Even
if a child doesn’t think that they can do it once you’re positive with them
they’ll aim for the sky and you can ... it’s just amazing the amount of work
you’ll get from them like looking back when I got to the school this year
and I’ve a list of all my students and the past teachers have put comments
on them you know this whatever, this child low you know low ... not very
intelligent and things like that and then I thought well I’m not even going
to look at those names, I’m not going to look at those comments and then I
worked through the year and it was only probably halfway through the year
that I pulled the comments out again and I thought no, this is wrong like
this one child who has just come so far and I can see from the testing at the
beginning of the year and I think it’s because the positiveness like she just
thrives on any positive behaviour and she’s just ... even the admin assistant
... what’s happened with this little girl, like she’s just ...
The stories we tell
• 2.36 Ray: …I’m not saying that it’s just me but it’s
just the positiveness that she thrives on and she’s just
come so far this year and it’s not only her, there’s a
few children and it’s just that that’s what they want
and at that age that that’s what they expect and the
minute you start being negative with them that’s
when they hit rock bottom again and they're not
going to try, they don’t think that they’re going to get
anywhere, well they’re not going to try and I think
that that was drummed into us a lot as well, the
positiveness
The stories we tell
they want
 they expect
 they hit rock bottom
 they're not going to try
 they don’t think that they’re going to get anywhere
 they’re not going to try

Young children as different
1.21 Rob:
… Our distributed prac, you know once a week…
really did have an impact on me, especially because I was in a
pre-primary classroom. I hadn’t touched any early childhood
classrooms below year 3 …In small groups I could try some of
the things I filtered through from my lectures into the things. So
my attitude towards these little kids, hey, I am not trying to
achieve some objectives from the lesson plan I am really
focussing on you. Especially at this age, you are not really
looking for a knowledge acquisition you are really looking for a
skills acquisition and that was a shift as well, how to hold a
pencil, wow, that’s so basic. It was very much a situation of, ‘I
can see’.
The idea of ‘normal’
The term ‘normal’ was first used in a
medical discourse and then
transferred to social sciences… from
the beginning, pathological was
defined in opposition to healthy
(Fendler, 2001, p.127).
The idea of ‘normal’
Before 1800, pathology was the
central and specified term, and
healthy was the general or default
condition; anything that was not
designated pathological was
assumed to be healthy.
(Fendler, 2001, p.127).
Then…..
Pathological
(Abnormal)
Clearly defined
The idea of ‘normal’
The desirable condition, then, was not
specified, not circumscribed, and the
possibilities for ways of being
healthy were theoretically un-limited
(Fendler, 2001, p.127).
Now….
Normal
Clearly defined
The idea of ‘normal’
After 1800 however, in scientific and social scientific discourse, the term
‘normal’ became the central and specified term in opposition to
‘pathological’
…the specifications for ‘normal’ were constituted in a measurable population,
either in terms of an average or socially defined virtue…anything that
could not be defined as normal/average was then regarded as
pathological….the possibilities for being normal were theoretically
limited… normal pertains to a specific set of qualities that have been
rationalised by statistical and scientific justifications…
(Fendler, 2001, p.128).
Unbelievable children
• 2.33 Sally: Yeah and I’ve actually used some of that with my
pre-primary who are ... because especially the ones that are ...
there are couple that have been diagnosed with ADHD would
you believe it? At five or six years old and another couple who
are very, very active and aggressive little people and we do ...
have started doing some visualisation and relaxation stuff and
these people fall asleep which is fantastic and they ... I ask
them to draw their pictures or talk about you know their
journey when they've been relaxing and we’re seeing some
different little people …
Pointless learning
• 2:4 Sally: Or pointless ... you get a ... like a lot of ... people
have a theme in early childhood like in pre-primary or
whatever so we’re doing clowns today and of course clowns
aren’t relevant to the lives of these children today so yeah it’s
... and just cutting out coloured pieces of paper and sticking
them onto things I just you know there’s a lot of pointless yeah
that happens and it isn’t related to their lives yeah…
Different lives
• Sally: …it occurs to me almost everyday because we’ve got
some sad little people who’ve been you know punched and
bitten by their parents and all sorts of nasty things happening
Different lives
• Sally:…I keep reminding myself about a lot of the stuff that Susan talked
about about low socioeconomic areas that she worked in and remembering
that doesn’t matter how some of these come across these people love their
children you know even if they've done these nasty things and still
remembering to respect and value where these little people are coming
from and not sort of ... sometimes it’s really hard because they’ll say things
to you and you go you know you can’t then you think well hang on a
minute, that’s their life’s context and how can I ... what good am I being to
them if I start criticising that? Yeah so I remember that quite often and
sometimes it’s sadly as I said everyday that I have to sort of remind myself
about that but I’m glad I’ve got it in my head because otherwise I’d
probably be going ‘round stomping on everybody’s sensitivities causing all
sorts of trouble.
Different lives
• 3.13 Int:
Were you involved with the kindergarten/primary research?
• 3.14 Nat:
Yeah, yeah. And I found that to be really interesting in my
class…I actually sort of gave Carly my assistant, and said can you just look
at this list today and I asked her to watch the kids, I thought oh probably be
better for her to do it and it sort of helped me a lot with looking at my
indigenous kids. And as opposed to my non-indigenous and just seeing ...
how it works for them ... in the class and you know what ... where their
interests are and what makes them stay in the place and want to learn, and
stuff like that. And I didn’t actually keep any of it, I kind of just spoke to
Carly about it and got rid of it but I shouldn’t have.
Different lives
• Normalisation operates through the discourse of
developmentality when the generalisations that stipulate
normal development are held to be defined and desirable, and
all departures from that circumscribed stipulation are held to
be not-normal or deviant. The generalization serves-more or
less explicitly- as the norm, and the lives of individual children
are evaluated with reference to that norm’ (Fendler,2001,
p.128).