This paper has 2 over all purposes

Firstly, I want to explore how trainee teachers registered on a University Diploma in Literacy and ESOL course embody different conceptions of literacy.

I am conscious in this undertaking of this seemingly being an area that has been discussed in detail from within a professional community of teacher educators and while it may be recently discovered terrain for me – there is a significant body of work available to which this is a contribution. What is distinct about this discussion is I am not here driven by a desire to improve my practice as a teacher educator – as such (though that desire is always lurking). Nor am I using a social practices theoretical framework to critique a skills based approach as such.

My intention is to map trainee teachers’ changing perspective – to see if and how their view changes and if so – along what lines, and what key points in the programme and propelled by what particular engagements. Although broadly I am asking about trainees’ engagement with different conceptions of literacy, I anticipate that what will emerge are conflicting and contradictory views and it is the nature of this contestation I want to explore.  I appreciate the reflexivity that this requires as in part I am implicated in trainees developing understanding: their changing conception may be amongst other things a reflection of my professional prowess.

Given that this research stands outside of a policy infrastructure that aligns itself to the delivery of government policy – I am not a practitioner nor am I connected to any organisation with an interest in the success of policy and am able to dominate notions of both literacy or literacies – as far as this study is concerned. Literacy as social practices based on empirical research is a stark critique of a skills based approach and while they are not entirely irreconcilable, adopting a literacies approach would seem to undermine much of the infrastructure that defines the skills of life legacy that still dominates adult literacy and ESOL teaching.  

One of my current trainees quite expresses it quite well: ‘all of this is very interesting but at the end of the day, I still have to tick that box’.

What I explore with trainees are their own hybrid literacies, or hybrid literacy conceptions. Am here echoing Wilson third space literacies, Kell and the notion of literacy as shell that prohibits the formation of literacies to emerge. But my intention is to explore trainees hybrid literacies. That is the study looks at their changing ideas but in so doing I explore not their explicit answer to the question: what do you understand by the term literacy, what does it mean to be a competent literacy user. I also invite them to reflect on the implications so literacy as social practice and to annotate their own approaches to completing an assignment. I exploring their own reconciliations of literacy and literacies my focus is not restricted to an entirely academic arena but explores research participants literacies in different places and spaces.

The second exploration is methodological.

Although based largely on as aspect of my practice, I have not framed this research as action research in that I do not particularly seek to improve upon my any aspect of the programme as a result of this study. I am however conscious of being deeply implicated within the study and to ensure my altering presence part of the material under study.

The study makes use of situational analysis: grounded theory pushed around the post-modern turn.

(I will need to add to this – for now – it’s blogged , as they say – it’s late, I will return at a later stage in a different colour)

Individual Human elements / actors Literacy students: case studies Theorists – Barton, Hamilton, Un-named author Mentors John Hayes (policy Post16)	Non-human elements / actants Online spaces & electronic communications Visual representations of literacy (Curriculum documents  & statistics) ILPs / Lesson Plans / Schemes of Work / Materials Assignments
Collective Human elements / actors Students (ESOL / Literacy) Coalition Policy New Labour Policy	Implicated / silent actors / actants Race, gender and class
	Key events in situation Election Spending review and budget Events in organisations
Discursive constructions, individual or collective human actors The literacy / ESOL learner Good / Proper English Teachers metaphors for teaching	Discursive constructions of non-human actants Race / gender / class: irrelevant in official discourse & learning outcomes
Political / economic elements Work context ie teaching numeracy	Socio cultural / symbolic elements Qualification The literate adult
Temporal elements: US national historical frame Pre-Skills for Life Skills for Life Coalition	Spatial elements Training Rooms workplaces Tutorial rooms Classroom
Major issue debates (usually contested) conceptions of literacy	Related discourses (historical narrative &/or visual) changing conceptions of literacy

Thrift: non-representational theory.

Text opens with a quote from Taussig - that acknowledges race, gender and nation as constructed, invented and representational yet having the appearance of something immutable, culture appears as the nature order.

The reworked quote referenced to Taussig in 1993, hints at an excitement, an enthusiastic willingness to get involved in an analytical project.

How does some so order come to appear so obdurate.

Years later the brilliance of this revelation remain - as does the slow unpicking of the social.

Situational Map of ‘Learning to be a Literacies Teacher'

Situational analysis takes grounded theory and ‘pushes it around the postmodern turn’ (Clarke 2005:1) The commitments to representing those we study in their own terms / through their own perspectives remains, but if through the systematic collection of qualitative data GT has the tendency to smooth over and out differences, SA enables the telling complicated stories about data, representing differences, contradictions and incoherence.  

It is apparent when exploring these methodological traditions that there are strong connections within and between them. Clarkes pushing GT around the post-modern turn entails a ‘method assemblage’ and hence includes discourse analysis, grounded theory coding, actor network theories, relational materialities, symbolic interactionism and the full menu of other qualitative research methodologies.

In explicating her method, Clarke (2005) argues for reframing of the analytical unit – as it root metaphor - include not the social process / action but the social ecology / situation: she is careful to point out that the situation is other than the context of action, but is directly implicated as a constituent part of the unit of analysis.

Her methodology suggest 3 sorts of ‘maps’: situational, social / arena and positioning maps. As she points out ‘map’ may in terms of geography sound largely bounded, fixed with clearly defined boundaries and pathways. Yet this methodology implies reflexivity (the cartographer is part of the landscape), flexibility. Its roots may be grounded, but its source is uncertain and modest with the capacity to represent contradiction.  Clarke (2005) exemplifies mapping with the use of narrative, visual and historical discourse materials, and offers possibilities for more intense interrogation of data.  The map is not the analysis but a tool upon which the analysis is based.

Situational Map: doing

All the analytically pertinent human and non-human elements: individuals, groups, organisations, institutions, subcultures ...

First messy situational map

• Literacy as skills
• Literacies discourses
• Functional skills
• The ‘good / competent’ teacher
• Literacy / Language learner
• Literacy / Language learning
• Policy: language / literacy & economy
• Quality
• Further Education College
• Community Education
• Prison education
• Competent functional adult
• Academic knowledge
• Research
• Practice
• Education, training and economy
• Core-curriculum documents
• ‘Good’ English
• Training room
• Literacy / Language classroom
• Assignments
• Computers: twitter, blogging & learning software packages
• Written assignments
• Library – reading materials
• 2^nd marker & EE
• Quality in HE
• Skills for Life policy 1999 - 2010
• Coalition government
• Skills strategy updates post 2010
• Key websites: NRDC, Excellence Gateway, eBridge
• PowerPoint presentations
• Students / trainees / teachers
• Mentors
• ILPs
• Lesson plans, schemes of work
• Blog
• Class: working class vs. chav
• Immigrant, foreigner
• Multi or bilingualism
• Qualified
• North of England
• University Diploma, Level 5
• HE funding

Clarke, A. (2005). Situational analysis: Grounded theory after the postmodern turn, Sage Publications, Inc.

               

un/reconciled literacies: how to teachers conceptualise adult language and literacy as a pedagogic subject

This paper explores how teachers encounter and conceptualise different ideas of literacy. The first initial explorations of literacy - based on a series of text which invited them to answer the direct question: what does it mean to be literate - demonstrated a series of understandably common sense perceptions.

Common sense perceptions that have a highly developed policy infrastructure to support them. Other notions of literacy have been introduced and there is a strong awareness in the group that these are of some significance.

The group are well qualified and experienced - mainly post-graduates (one doctoral student) who are confident and competent scholars able to engage with the ideas.

These ideas are an enormous challenge; they have the potential to fundamentally undermine institutionally sanctioned (required) approaches to teaching literacy.  The first lecture in which I offered sociocultural perspectives as an alternative to skills was met with varied responses.

One student liked the idea - he works with students on a one-to-one basis and could immediately see how this implied approach might translate into practice.

Another students expressed concern about the impossibility of the implied approach. I am interested in this and suspect that the line of thought is something t do with situation. The significance of a socio-cultural view of literacy is not directly related to its pedagogic implications. In other words, there is a sense in which what is pedagogically convenient does not determine ontology, the ontology of literacy as a lived, embodied practice. But the relation between these dimensions - literacy ontology and literacy conceptions might well be influenced by the situation ie policy sanctioned views on literacy and a training course in how best to implement them.

Do I teach a subject or deliver a curriculum?

I think here I may be echoing debates about teacher education or teacher training. Do I teach a subject or deliver a curriculum? This is a rhetorical question. But it neatly captures a very real tension that I explore along with my trainees.

The paper seeks to extend, develop and further explore tensions tentatively suggested in my doctoral thesis: a tension between quality as abstract (textualisation) and quality as embodied.

As a intuitive writer - I chose to use the concept embodied rather than practice. As this offers the potential to recognise race and gender as dimensions of professional experience. But also seemed to enable a grasping of what might so far have been unarticulated experiences, implied, inferred, captured in passing through narrative.

A practice is a mediated action with a history
Scollon 2001: 66

Quality as embodied rather than as practised.  There is no mediated action in the embodiment of quality. It suggests a series of moments rather than an extended and clearly articulated approach. In embodiment is contained the notion of tension between competing discourses, compromise, contradiction and negotiated settlement.

Scollan, R. (2001) Mediated Discourses: the Nexus of Practice. London: Routledge cited by Baynham and Prinsloo (2009) the future of literacy studies, Palgrave

Planning for 2011 - 2012 - PostDoc Research Focus

1) un/reconciled literacies: how to teachers conceptualise adult language and literacy as a pedagogic subject


2) taming the wild profusion: research and pedagogic practice


3) the idea of quality and its embodiments


4) how do mentors contribute towards the professional development of trainee teachers in FE ITE

Discussing the writing process

Level 2 Literacy class in which students discussed the writing process as a series of stages represented by images ie scissor to represent editing, a map to represent planning. 

The images on laminate cards provide a focal point for discussion and impose a natural order on the writing process suggesting that certain things happen at particular points in the process of composition. Students are not invited to state what they actually do and misplaced order is counted as a mistake rather than a reflection on their approach. 

The cards then have the capacity to impose an order; trainees work together and so the assumption is that they each have a uniform approach. They may not. 

This assemblage includes: teacher who is out of the picture, the laminate cards, an idea about writing, the classroom - including tables, chairs, a decorated wall and interactive whiteboard. 

The silence in the room is the actual order that learners use when composing a text. There is no discussion of the kind of text and the assumption is that this is an extended text. Students may write text messages, postcards, emails. These are not composed using the same order. 

What’s the appeal of Actor Network Theory: first annotated draft

After Reading  Mulcahy, D. (2010), ‘Affective encounters: The critical contribution of embodiment and emotion to ‘accomplished’ teacher subjectivities and professional teaching standards’, Educational Philosophy and Theory.

Actor Network Theorists (ANT) seem to betray a coquettish pride when asked to define and defend their stance, arguing that such conversations may lead to destruction or domestication. (Fenwick and Edwards 2010)

Fenwick and Edwards (2010)  lead the initiate towards ANT as a constellation of ideas, seeking to maintain fidelity to mess, disorder and ambivalence of phenomenon. There is no single, stable or identifiable ANT framework. It is instead a hybrid, a diaspora.

None-the-less a key assumption associated with ANT that humans are not treated differently from non-humans – that there is a mutual cyborgian dependency between object and subject. Humans are denied a privileged, a priori status in the world. The position, referred to as symmetry: is not only counter intuitive; it is disturbing.  The flat-ontology associated with ANT would seem to strip humanness: meaning making and subjectivity from communities who assert this recognition as a right rather than a privilege. However, the ANT constellation maintains it appeal by virtue of its refusal of closure. This is a doctrine that has sacred and defining features while maintaining porous boundaries. 

The appeal of ANT is its interest in the mechanics of the social. Its insistence is that while orders appear obdurate, fixed and natural – they are an accomplishment. The objective of ANT is to understand how things are held together: ideas, identities, rules, routines, policies and instruments.  This allows a forensic exploration of categories and distinctions central to education – teaching, learning and pedagogy; literacy, literacies and functional. ANT places humans as part of the world made up of things and parts of things: animals, intentions and technologies.

With ANT everything in the social and natural world is a continuously generated effect of the webs of relationship within which they are located (Law 2007)

Fenwick, T. and Edwards, R. (2010), Actor-network theory in education(Taylor & Francis).

Law, J. (2007), ‘Making a mess with method’, in William Outhwaite and Stephen P Turner (eds.), The Sage Handbook of Social Science Methodology, London Sage 595 - 606