Battling through the system: a working-class teacher in an inner-city primary school

This paper explores the told story of a white working-class woman still teaching in an innercity primary school in the UK. Issues of her continuing exclusion despite early career success demonstrate how social class bias can operate within the UK education system in a variety of ways. Her story is set in the context of new EAZ, the appointment of ‘superheads’ to failing schools and other government initiatives aimed at improving the education of children from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Jenny is from this background herself and finds the cost of trying to maintain and celebrate her class identity very high—she describes it as a ‘constant battle’. Her voice responds to Maguire's exploration of how Teacher Education in the UK reaffirms the middle-class ‘promise’ of becoming a teacher by both denying and disowning working-class cultures. This paper calls for more extensive research into the lived reality of difference when students from non-traditional backgrounds attempt to enter the profession and teach within it.     

Does distance matter? A study of married Indian women professionals staying away from families to pursue higher studies*

‘Return to school’ for enhancement of career is considered a means to career mobility. However, if ‘return to school’ is chosen after a certain stage it has its own costs and challenges. It becomes more complex, especially for women, if geographical distance from family becomes an additional variable to it. Present study, grounded in Indian context, examines married Indian women professionals, who opted for geographical separation from their families (including, in some cases, infants and small children) to pursue higher studies. The study explores what spurs well-qualified married women professionals to take a career break and join a rigorous educational programme which requires them to stay away from their families for a substantial time. Key themes that emerged from the study can be categorised as motives: dissatisfaction with work situation, need for skill enhancement, and an urge to develop one’s own identity; facilitators: support and encouragement from spouse and other family members and age; challenges faced: psychological turmoil, strain on relationships, and financial stress.     

A sort of silence

Olive Robinson began her teaching career in a village school. After marriage she taught for a short while in London before moving to Oxford and taking time out to bring up her family. Returning to teaching in the 1970s she developed an interest in children with learning difficulties and taught, organised and coordinated special needs in several different comprehensive schools over a period of 15 years. She became a part‐time tutor at Oxford University Department of Educational Studies where, after her retirement from teaching, she became a guest lecturer. She also taught part time at Ruskin College and contributed to the Special Educational Needs Diploma course as an associate lecturer at the then Oxford Polytechnic. Her greatest love, however, was her time spent as organiser of an adult basic skills class where she met many fascinating and generously optimistic tutors and students.     

From stories of staying to stories of leaving: a US beginning teacher’s experience

This narrative inquiry traces a beginning teacher’s unfolding career over a six-year period in a diverse middle school in the fourth largest city in the USA. The work revolves around two conceptualizations: ‘stories to live by’ and ‘stories to leave by.’ How these identity-related phenomena surface and play out in an entry-level teacher’s experiences become revealed. The stories of experience lived and told, and relived and retold, illuminate the influence of context on beginning teachers’ knowing. The interwoven nature of educators’ lives also forms a major theme. In the final analysis, the beginning teacher’s ‘stories to live by’ are no longer able to sustain her in her urban teaching milieu. Shifting occurs and ‘stories to leave by’ prevail.     

Returning to Teaching: the career breaks and returns of married women primary headteachers

The term ‘broken career’ is used to describe the most common work pattern for married women teachers. The break in teaching service involves leaving teaching for a period, usually in order to have and to care for young children, and then returning to teaching when family responsibilities seem to permit. The article considers what were the significant features in the timing, the length and the type of the breaks in teaching service of a sample of married women who were primary and infant headteachers. The manner of the returns, is examined, in particular how the returns came about, and this indicates the importance of personal contacts and informal networks in bringing women back into primary teaching. Finally the article considers the inadequacy of the term ‘broken’ or ‘interrupted’ career to describe or explain the experiences of these women.     

‘Where are You?’ Giving Voice to the Teacher by Reclaiming the Private/Public Distinction

In a time of cultural pluralism and legitimation crisis (Habermas), there is an increasing uncertainty among teachers in Sweden about with what right they are fostering other people's children. What does it mean to teach ‘common values’ to the coming generation? How do teachers find legitimacy and authority for this endeavour, not as family members or as politicians, but as teachers? To respond to this uncertainty, the paper takes the public/private distinction as a starting‐point for rethinking the place of the school. Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt and of Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons, it argues that the school is an in‐between place—a place that transforms values into ‘common goods’ and turns fostering into a teaching matter. The overall purpose of the paper is to sketch out the consequences of this ‘in‐betweenness’ for what it means to find one's voice as a teacher in fostering the coming generation.     

CSE and the 16+: Teachers' Views

During the interview ‘Mary’ – who had last year been a school pupil and this year is a first‐year undergraduate on the new degree in Education (with Teaching Certificate) – talked at some length, and with considerable feeling, about how her main frustration as a female pupil had been what she saw as her systematic disenfranchisement from influence over the content and process of the schools' curricula which she had pursued over the previous thirteen years. Although she felt that all pupils suffered this lack of influence she was convinced that girls suffered disproportionately. [Some time later in the interview], when talking about the ‘teaching practice’ she had recently completed, ‘Mary’ described how her ‘music and movement’ work had met with ‘loud and disruptive’ reaction from some of the boys in the mixed class of 7–8 year‐olds, even though the majority of the children had clearly enjoyed and been engaged by the scheme she had designed. Faced with this rejection, and experiencing some anxiety about how the teachers and her tutor would assess her potential as a future teacher if she was not seen to be exercising what they would count as ‘good control’ of the class, ‘Mary’ resolved her ‘problem’ by designing an alternative scheme which the few boys would not (and did not) reject. Although the girls had ‘subsequently shown less interest’, their quiet acquiescence to what she offered them reduced her anxiety about her assessment as a teacher. When she related her pupil experience to her teaching practice experience ‘Mary’ was dismayed to realise that she had ‘reproduced for others precisely that frustration which [she herself] had experienced as a pupil’.

Extract from author's notes when evaluating a new pre‐service degree course, June 1983.     

大学生职业生涯规划课教学模式研究

在高校职业生涯规划课逐渐转变为必修课的背景下。以实践性和体验性为特色的职业生涯规划课对教师以知识构建为核心的传统教学模式提出了新的挑战。高校结合自身办学特色,积极创新职业生涯规划课教学模式对激发学生内在需求、提高课程教学质量和毕业生就业质量有着十分重要的现实意义。任课教师只有遵循教育规律,从课前准备、创新课堂教学方法、...     

Primary teacher identity,commitment and career in performative school cultures

The research reported here maps changes in primary teachers' identity, commitment and perspectives and subjective experiences of occupational career in the context of performative primary school cultures. The research aimed to provide in‐depth knowledge of performative school culture and teachers' subjective experiences in their work of teaching. Themes in the data reveal changed commitments and professional identities. The teachers who had an initial vocational commitment and strong service ethic were the older teachers in the sample. While some of the younger teachers expressed vocationalism in the form of wanting ‘to make a difference’, they also stressed the importance of time compatibility for family‐friendly work and child care. In the ‘highs’ and ‘lows’ of school life a number of factors supported some of the teachers' initial commitments, thus, providing ‘satisfiers’ in their work. However, some factors impacted negatively on teacher commitment. The psychic rewards of teaching provided the main basis of commitment and professional work satisfaction. Teacher strategies in performative school cultures highlighted the impact and saliency of testing regimes. There was evidence, however, of teacher mediation of policy and their investment in a more creative professional identity in their involvement in nurturing programmes and creative projects. Whether the schools and teachers developed creative approaches to increase test scores or to ameliorate the worst effects of testing they demanded increased effort and commitment from the teachers. Teachers in the contemporary context, who had in many cases experienced a career in another occupation prior to teaching, seemed much more adept and realistic in both recognising and managing their range of parallel commitments and identities. They have become more strategic and political in defending their self‐identities. Some evidence suggests their priorities have been to hold on to their humanistic values and their self‐esteem, while adjusting their commitments.     

Heading for the Top — the career experiences of a group of women deputies in one LEA

This paper focuses upon the career attitudes and experiences of a group of women deputies in one LEA. It sets out to explore their construct of ‘career’ and asks, in particular, whether this matches that of the ‘career ambitious’ teacher sketched out in the research literature. The findings, based on in‐depth interviews, suggest that this is not the case. Few of the women deputies, for instance, claimed to have followed specific career plans or consciously participated in ‘career games’. A number of possible explanations are explored, and some interesting tensions noted. Does it perhaps hinge on the external circumstances that impact on women's careers? Is it an expression of women's allegiance to a value system which defines ‘career success’ in quite different ways? Is it a consequence of the nature of the role itself and the separate career track followed by senior women teachers in this authority? The biographical accounts of these deputies provide no easy answers, but rather serve to illustrate the complexity of women's career experiences.     

Recent policy,the numbers game and the schooling of the hearing impaired: a study of one teacher's career

ABSTRACT

This paper describes and analyses the fate of an educational innovation, namely the mainstreaming of hearing impaired children into a primary school. Set in the context of recent State policy, it is a critical case study of a ‘caring’ organization staffed by ‘professionals’ engaged in work upon children with special needs. The data presented are derived from ethnographic interview with a specially qualified teacher of the hearing impaired. Primarily, it explores the teacher's interaction with her male headteacher, from her perspective. Conflict developed between the two around the meaning of integration, and the use of the hearing impaired children as a resource to preserve the school, at a time of threatened closure. Eventually, there was a polarized antipathy between teacher and head; and a consequent teacher career failure and head career success, resulting in the ultimate resignation of the teacher. As such, the paper is a critique of the socially oppressive schooling of those children deemed to have special needs.     

Medical and Nursing Students' Development of Conceptions of Science during Three Years of Studies in Higher Education

This article is a presentation of current research on pupils’ experiences in encounters with their classmates in school. The starting point is the narratives of Loffa, a 25‐year‐old nursery teacher, telling us about her school experiences. She gives a picture of herself as a quiet and well‐behaved schoolgirl, and she talks about things such as the limited space she and a group of her classmates had in their classroom, about how they were regarded as ‘nerds’ by the other pupils and therefore had little to say in what went on in their classroom. Seen in the light of the political, social and historical context of the vision of a ‘school for all’ and of the principle of a ‘complex social environment’ this can be interpreted as one version of the specific expression in Lotta ‘s class of the built‐in conflicts of the comprehensive school, the conflicts between groups with different intellectual traditions and needs.     

Real lessons from imaginary teachers

The piece that follows had its first hearing as part of a symposium at the 1990 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in Boston. Sigrun Gudmundsdottir and Grace Grant were at the podium, presenting their two narrative accounts of one schoolteacher’s practice. The schoolteacher was present as well, through the medium of a 10‐minute video presentation of her perspective as a research participant. My task as discussant was to bring the three different accounts of one teacher’s practice together, partially reconcile their differences, and thereby teach us all something about the possibilities and limitations of qualitative research on teaching.

At this early point in her academic career, Sigrun Gudmundsdottir showed a good deal of professional courage. She invited us to re‐examine critically her doctoral research project, something that few of her peers would have agreed to do. Her stance, it seemed to me, was ‘Let’s see what more we can learn about good teaching through a critical, public examination of this work’. Sigrun’s stance remains a worthy model for all of us today.     

Securing the self: risk and aspiration in the post‐16 curriculum

This paper examines the social meaning of subject choice in the post‐16 context through a case study of Media Studies in a selective school. Students' accounts are discussed in terms of both their enjoyment of the subject and their negotiation of its ‘legitimacy’. The analysis of their comments in interviews stresses the subject's precarious position in a school where a relatively traditional hierarchy of subjects still prevails. It also considers the strength of family ‘projects’ in framing children's educational ‘choices’. Media Studies is discussed as a negotiable option primarily facilitating projections into a new middle‐class sense of self‐hood.     

Presence in context: Teachers’ negotiations with the relational environment of school

This inquiry research builds on the theory of presence in teaching (Rodgers and Raider-Roth 2006) adding nuanced understandings of how school contexts play into teachers’ abilities to support students’ learning. Findings are drawn from multiple interviews with five veteran middle school teachers, teachers’ written work, and field observations. Illustrating these findings is the compelling story of an exemplary teacher’s negotiations of her practice in response to the school’s relational environment. Our findings point to the teacher’s sense of isolation and vulnerability–indicators of the relational context in the school as a threat to undermining her presence. They also create a compelling argument for the importance of a healthy relational context to support teachers’ most powerful teaching, hence students’ learning.     

‘Whoops,I forgot David’: children's perceptions of the adults who work in their classrooms

This article reports on the findings of a small‐scale study into the perceptions of 78 primary school children regarding the adults in their classrooms. The data show that children easily differentiate between their own class teacher and other adults, but report a substantial overlap between the activities of teachers and teaching assistants. Some express the difference in terms of status rather than role. Accounts call into question the notion that teaching assistants ‘help’ rather than teach and that there is a clear division of labour between them and teachers. Teachers and assistants are seen as working in an interdependent way, with each making a significant contribution to children's learning. The difficulties of using children's language as evidence are considered and it is concluded that the notion of a ‘remodelled’ primary school workforce needs to take into account the ways in which teachers and assistants maintain fluid working relationships.     

Back to the future on gender and anti‐school boys: a response to Jeffrey Smith

This article examines recent claims by Jeffrey Smith that: (1) ‘hegemonic masculinity’ is an expression of working class counter‐school culture; (2) some teachers are ‘cultural accomplices’ in constructing ‘hegemonic masculinities’ of anti‐school working class boys, thereby contributing to their underachievement; and (3) these ‘cultural accomplices’ are an emerging response to recent moral panics and neo‐liberal managerialism concerned with ‘failing boys’ at school. It is suggested that ‘hegemonic masculinity’ is not necessarily associated with anti‐school values in working class culture. Many working class boys might subscribe to ‘hegemonic masculinity’ without rejecting learning. Contrary to Smith’s emphasis on how working class culture generates anti‐school ‘hegemonic masculinity’, there is the possibility that ‘hegemonic masculinity’ is fused with anti‐school values produced by organisational differentiation. The continuing commonalities between working class anti‐school boys and the ‘gender regime’ of some secondary schools for over 20 years implies something more enduring at work than recent moral panics.     

Turning to teaching: gender and career choice

As the largest public sector institution in the United Kingdom, education is a key site for studying the context of ‘choice’ and changes in the identities of professional workers in contemporary society. Recruitment and retention problems in education have led to the creation of new routes into teaching to attract career changers from other professions and occupations. In this paper we focus on career changers within the Economic and Social Research Council project ‘Primary Teacher Identity, Commitment and Career in Performative School Cultures’ who have entered teaching from other private sector occupations. We analyse these career changes in terms of ‘turning points’ in the participants’ lives in order to assess the extent to which choices are ‘self‐initiated’, ‘forced’ or ‘structural’. We are interested in the basis on which these choices were made and the impact of gender on career decisions.     

Strategic voices? Problems in developing oracy through ‘interactive whole‐class teaching’

This article considers what is meant by ‘interactive whole‐class teaching’, a central component of the British Government's primary and secondary Literacy Strategies. Drawing on published research evidence and a case‐study undertaken in a London comprehensive school, this essay suggests that contradictions in government policy have led to an increase in the kind of whole‐class teaching which offers an impoverished model of classroom discourse. Alternative models of pupil–teacher interaction are discussed. However, the article concludes that the current ideological imperative to deliver a literacy ‘quick‐fix’ is inimical to the conditions necessary to foster genuinely dialogic classroom talk.