While paper
sets up a polarity it doesn’t rest on one. There are clearly overlaps and
affordances between socio-cultural and cognitive theories of ALLN. Bracewell and Witte (2008) point out that
writing is social and material as well as cultural. Literacy as embodied how
incoherencies are woven into a narrative: teacher / writer / professional /
student -
Data
analysis explores moments when participants touch upon these different ideas.
The whole discussion is about writing – offers support in the writing of the
assignment, participant is a writer (aspires to get scripts published), and the
assignment itself is about teaching writing.
My focus is on literacy as the subject they teach but explores their
ideas about literacy from multiple perspectives including how they experience
their own engagements with text.
Analysis
University
Diploma is part of general policy driven initiative to improve quality of
literacy teaching predicated on basis that way to do that is define a body of knowledge
to be taught and then training teachers in how to deliver it. Define what they need
to know and qualification to assure their competence. There is a strong possibility
that teachers may come to the course with little general interest in broader ideas
about language literacy or pedagogy – but with a narrow instrumental interest
in ‘tips & techniques’ that improve their teaching.
Dis/connections between context,
motivation & engagement
Joseph: teaching but not a teacher.
Has been teaching
for 10 years, but talks in terms of being at a crossroads in life and asking
himself ‘what do I actually want to do?’ Makes references to his age, to time
running out and ‘his clock ticking’ – hinting at something of a desperation to achieve
goals that are not fulfilled by teaching literacy. The qualification has an exchange
value – he teaches in prison and sees the qualification as a way out of this
context. The quiet desperation is evident throughout as he clearly feels this environment
constrains his pedagogy. He talks about feeling burnt out, and is of the
opinion that 10 years in this context is too much. Whatever the bonhomie between
himself and students, there is always a threatening undercurrent. Other
teachers in prison have insisted on ensuring they see students as students and
that whatever else defines the context is not their concern. But the context is
physically inescapable, from the process required to observe a class, to moving
around, to managing a classroom situation.
Pearl: trying to live by ideas about good interaction, feedback and talk
Had worked
for years in a school – admin – upon retirement teacher and wanted to change career
and teach adult literacy. She is doing
the course out of interest and works in an open access workshop in her local
AEI. She teaches on a 1-to-1 basis. Over
a period of time she has worked with a single student who she has a good knowledge
of. The knowledge has not been gathered as a direct result of a broadened
assessment – but has been gleaned indirectly through general talk about other
aspects of the students work. Not treated as being central to how literacy is
taught. Throughout the tutorial she makes regular references to the reading and
mentions specific theories and ideas about literacy.
She attempts
throughout the directly relate these ideas to what she does. The attempts are open
to discussion: what she means by context, collaboration and success are clearly
ideas in the shaping. The qualification required by her student lurks and
defines her pedagogy but not in a way that she experiences as constraining.
This tutorial represents a shift in which we have agreed that it is possible
her student may ultimately be more able to pass the test or at least improve
her literacy if there is less insistent and exclusive focus on trying out
multiple papers all the time.
Once conceptions of literacy are embodied they become part of a complex nexus of other considerations that cannot be teased out as a singular variable. What and how we teach is not solely determined
by technical considerations of what curricular documents say, what and how we
construct our subject or what the environment determines but a shifting combination
of these.
Teaching, testing and
targeting:
i)
‘It’s not an excuse, it’s a business.’
A point sometimes made about teachers who have been practicing
since the inception of SfL is that – as they have not experienced any other
framework, they may not always have access to frames of reference that would enable
critique. This may resonate but as the opening quote suggests this is not the
case with Joseph. More concerning is that at times he embodies what might be
more fairly understood as an environmental limitation.
It’s very target driven, when you are in a target driven environment
professional judgement goes out the window, it suffers, because, that’s the
main critique of my teaching, it’s not an excuse, it’s a business. They want
more for less. It’s stressful; they are asking you for what you can’t deliver. It’s
terribly stressful. I’ve had 10 years of it and I’m burnt out from it. 10 years. It’s too long for this environment. It’s too long. You should probably have a
shelf life of 5 years.
Joseph, Prison Literacy Teacher
ii)
She doesn’t have literacy in her life at all
Pearl
grapples with ideas about literacy and is aware of the importance for her
students to experience resonance between in-college and out-of-college literacies.
But here she seems to suggest that what
she does in college with her as a teacher – even when she ‘provides’ her with a
context drawn from real life, is ‘literacy’ but the ‘unschooled’ tasks she
performs at home is not.
Respondent: [...] She didn't do any
literacy work at all. She didn’t have
literacy in her life at all. As far as
things like letter writing or reading she didn't do any. [...]
Interviewer: What about things like
managing her house or managing her family, or paying bills, or does she work at
all?
Respondent: Oh she works, she’s a
cook and a cleaner. [...] I know that
she functions in her job and in her daily life with these things perfectly
well.
Interviewer: So with the literacy
aspects of those things?
Respondent: Yes, she does. She has to write orders at work, she has to
leave notes for people, she has to account for things that she’s done at work
and as I say, make orders.
BRACEWELL, R.J & WITTE, S.P 2008. Implications of
Practice, Activity and Semiotic Theory for Cognitive Constructs of Writing
Chapter 15 in ALBRIGHT, J. & LUKE, A. Pierre
Bourdieu and literacy education, Routledge, Taylor & Francis: London.
GRENFELL, M., BLOOME, D., HARDY, C., PAHL, K., ROWSELL, J.
& STREET, B. V. 2011. Language,
Ethnography, and Education: Bridging New Literacy Studies and Bourdieu, Oxon,
Routhledge.
