August

I'm looking forward to 4 weeks of writing and making a concerted effort to ensure that I let nothing creep into my time. Hubby will be in London - decorting the house. So I shall have some time alone.

I have afew glimpses of ideas about how to locate my paper into an Australian context. yet frm reading the papers what i really need is to ensure I fully explain the one in which I am writing.

Robson 2006: 54

Conceptions of teaching varied according to context.

this is a central idea for my paper. My suggestion is that it is the multiple contexts within which the teaching of ALLN take place that makes the potential for the development of a single and cohesive professional identity fraught with difficulty - though perhaps this is complex rather than impossible.

The role changes, the templates for good practice vary - this may be linked to Coffield's text about ubiquitous perfect practice.

An understanding of literacy is driven as much by client as it is by subject.

The lack of what might be considered as a 'subject specilaism' that carries with it  a vocational identity.

'The importance of [...] the teachers existing identities and communities of practice can not be overstated.' Robson 2006: 55

ah - BigBrother is one.

Exploration

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. T. S. Eliot 

Onwards and Upwards

The sense of direction has given me new momentum. It really doesn't matter that a 'PhD by Publication' may not be the path I take, Just those small concrete ideas - 50 words a day; a mole skin notebook; a pen I love; an iPAD - a blog. They all seem to have motivated me. And I'm quite motivated anyway. 

I have just cracked a new one: how to embed a word document into a blog. 

You may click on this hyper-linked text  to understand the point I am making. 

An academic

An academic - someone who writes, teaches and engages in research.

Doing Identity

The work of identity is not confined to one period of our lives, as some theories of socialisation would suggest.

Nor is it confined to particular settings.

We define who we are, by where we have been and where we are going, and this leads to an understanding of identity as a trajectory in time incorporates that both incorporates the past and the future into the meaning of the present.

(Jocelyn Robson)

This is an important idea. The idea of identity as a trajectory - the self, that is the professional self - as an ongoing project. If professionalisation implies the idea of an occupational group becoming a profession, it also implies a change in how workers see themselves. From activist to professional. Is this the shift that accompanies, ‘from campaign the strategy’.

This means that our present is shaped in part by our sense of who we are becoming. Who we are – as professionals – is shaped by who we want to become, who we see ourselves becoming. Or our sense of who we feel we can or will be.

This is not an argument connected with personality; I have no interest here in the interpersonal construction of shared or private selves. It is the professional self that concerns and interests me.

It suggests 'identity' as an active process, the self as a site always and already under construction.

Identification rather than identity.

The self as pastiche.

Professionalisation

I have suggested that professionalisation refers to an intentional process of changing the occupational culture of a particular group of workers. And that in the case of basic skills it has been 'policy' rather than 'practitioner' driven.

There are competing discourses that surround the process which remains a hotly contested term. It may be that'professionalisation' leads to the development of professionalism and a professional culture and so should be welcomed, associated with increased democratisation and accountability. The status, security and conditions of service of the occupation terrain is improved as well as the capacity to fulfil their vocation - occupational calling.

On the other hand these same features may be experienced as loss - loss of autonomy, loss of capacity to control the epistemic boundaries of a specialised area of expert knowledge, loss of capacity to control those who enter the terrain, loss of bargaining power in employment terms and conditions, loss of status as esoteric knowledge - the 'secret garden' is exposed and subject of bullet point specification.

Both sets of theorisations are unsatisfactory for capturing the shift I want to explore in basic skills teaching.

The 2nd framing - that it leads to loss - is easiest to caste aside. It is my suggestion that the autonomy previously enjoyed by basic skills teaching was not based on high regard for their esoteric knowledge or high status. The knowldge of the basic skills teacher very rarely amounted to more than comment sense. FE has been dominated by the view that - subject expertise was a sufficient requirement for good teaching. Given that the subject of basic skills was an everyday subject - reading, writing and communication - the status of basic skills teaching was equally every day - quote PMS. Government attention - professionalisation - has not lead to loss but rather has led to an enhancement of sorts.

It is the 1st that requires more detailed exploration. This is the strand of thought I develop to consider whether the professionalisation of basic skills teaching is 'possible'. That is in 1999 with the first wave of policy effervescent surrounding Skills for Life - their existed in the occupational terrain distinctly anti-professional strands of thought.

Blunkett (check) suggests a shift towards evidence based practice as one that follows a template - uninformed practice, to uniformed prescription to informed prescription leading to informed practice.

Start with a quote

I may as well start with a quote; the promise was that in Australia such a reference would be culturally acceptable. Though the reaction would have been the same as mine. Disgust.

I had a 'Research Conversation' with writer in residence Peter Kelly today. Professor Peter Kelly. I don't really know what 'Professor' means. We can all profess with greater or lesser impact. He suggested that all ethnographic research is is a series of stories. So - this is where I can start to write a few stories.

I said I would start with a quote.

'Just get it all down (this is said with a sharp Australian accent). Just get It all down. The at the end of it, you have to prepared to sift through your own vomit.'

He kept saying what he said to his PhD students and asked me what I wanted to be 'when I grew up'. I have grey hair. What ever the future is I'm not sure I want to be a want to be.

The kind of academic I admire and aspire to.

PhD by publication. Have I been sold the cheap version. Do I want to leave education?

I liked the description of an academic. One who writes, who teaches and who does research. Wrap your research around your activity - teaching, and link in with the contacts you have - the want to be is there - learning literacy on the street in Accra - or public secretarial services and an ethnography of Accra. It has to be done.

So - I am inspired. I need to develop a plan.

1. I have purchased a notebook. My promise: fill it up.

2. Dennis (2011) Is the professionalisation of basic skills teaching possible, desirable or inevitable? Literacy and Numeracy Studies, Vol 18 Issue 2

3. Research proposal - Sculpting out a literacy practice from Folk, Policy and Ethnographic constructions of literacy - £20, 000

4. Situational analysis - What has race and gender got to do with being black and female? Playing the organisational race card.

5. Involve partner organisations in research activity - proposals forTiLLS & UnDips : i) Teachers' perceptions of literacy ii) how trainees develop an academic 'voice'.

6. Dennis (2011) Quality, translation and betrayal, Literacy Vol 45 Issue 3