This chapter gives expression to my understanding of teachers' identities as fluid, continually in a state of flux, multiple and non-linear. Being inspired to move from charting a life in a simple, linear fashion from a fixed position as researcher, my explorations of these teachers' lives included complex, somewhat eclectic data production approaches and interpretative representations. Understanding teachers' lives, told and experienced as dialectic between their unique experiences and the constraints of the broad, social, political and economic structures, alerted me to a range of possibilities that I needed to contribute to the construction of the stories. My study therefore employs the research design as a discursive space of momentarily caught glimpses, produced and constructed by the teachers and researcher to create a meaningful representation of a person's life within a text. These multiple and momentarily caught glimpses, in words, images, desires, thoughts, sentiments and meanings gave me access to teachers' lives, told and experienced, the articulated and the evaded, the private and public.
The cubist metaphor, drawn from the field of visual art, provided me the space to create a framework for the layers of meaning that I have come to in my interpretative struggles as I attempt to explore and understand these complex and contradictory lives. This analytical framework provided the spaces for representing the different dimensions of teachers' lives, each layer/principle offering a different dimension and meaning of the presences and absences in the stories teachers constructed of "a successful life". It also provided a framework to explore my own role in the authorship of the narratives, and therefore to reflect differently on what constitutes "data" in the research process. I am implicated in the construction of these teachers' stories as I bring to the research process as much who I am, as who the research participants are. That framework that I found in cubism enabled me to explore my own authorship in an imaginative way. Since the storied narrative is the researcher's construction, the purpose of the cubist framework is its power to enhance the trustworthiness of the text, for plausibility and consensus.
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Producing the data for this research study on the one hand assisted me in my attempt to know more about those investments teachers have in taking up particular subject positions and in the description of the formation of teachers' subjectivities. The analytical framework on the other hand assisted me in moving toward the unthought, providing the space to make visible those evaded and silenced investments and teachers' identities.
This chapter analyses the methodology employed to explore the lives of six teachers who continue to resist the stereotypical images of working and thinking to ensure moments of success. The focus of this study is to understand the meanings these teachers give to themselves as particular kinds of teachers, which inspire them to continue to commit themselves to the teacher position with some sense of fulfilment and pleasure.
In this study I have employed life history approaches to interpret teachers' lived experiences, to understand how these experiences constituted what makes them successful in their teacher position. In this chapter I present an argument for the use of life history research as the most appropriate method to explore teachers' transient and ambiguous experiences, as well as the inclusion of those cultural forms that have been marginalised, or regarded as non-academic means of representation. In doing so I am able to go beyond having access to "a life" as told, to the exploration of "a life" as experienced. This shift was crucial for my exploration of teachers' discourses and practices as well as the evaded and silenced in these discourses, to understand that the structures of successful identity and the positions that teachers take up in and through it are complex and contradictory.
SECTION A: DESCRIBING THE STUDY Research design
The research design that I devised for this study is shaped by my own specific background which includes my training and teaching experience as an art teacher, and my knowledge of teacher identity and professional development. This knowledge has equipped me with a particular perspective and theoretical view, and has definitely influenced and shaped the approaches that I employed to focus on particular issues of understanding "a life" as told and as experienced.
Seven years after the first democratic elections, and many teachers in South African classrooms continue to entertain and express thoughts of resigning from their teaching professions. Post-apartheid South Africa has seen a number of transformations in education.
As part of its social commitment to change, several Bills and Acts attempted to regulate the roles and responsibilities of teachers as a consolidated effort to transform racist education. The
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Norms and Standards for Educators (2000), Outcomes Based Education, the South African Council of Educators (SACE) Code of Conduct (1997) and the Development Appraisal System (1998) were some of the government's initiatives aimed at engaging teachers to change. However, teachers as products of the apartheid system themselves and having inherited particular meanings as teachers, these spaces for change involved uncertainty and risk taking.
Without delving too deeply into the multitude of reasons that contribute to teacher dissatisfaction, generally there are many teachers who have responded to the continued changes in a way that resulted in a sense of mis-alignment with their teacher position (see Singh 2002, Chapter One, pp. 8-9). The forces driving the issue of teacher resignation and the sense of disconnectedness that many teachers experience in their teacher position impacted on teacher's level of commitment. Many teachers continue to enact practices in their classrooms in a way that is less threatening, stereotypical and passionless.
However, there are also teachers who, while recognising the normative structures that regulate them, challenge and threaten the dominant forces and stereotypical images of being a teacher for rejuvenating moments that enable them to continue to commit themselves to their teacher position and enact practices that give their lives a sense of fulfilment and pleasure. It is these teachers that I seek out in this study.
My research involved a three-year study of teachers described above within the greater Durban region. I wanted to know about their lives, the construction of identities and the daily practices that constitute and give meaning to the multiple subject positions they occupied in making sense of their lives and the world. My study of teacher identity construction was done employing life history approaches, life history interviews, focus group interviews and a range of alternate methods to gain access into the teachers' lived experiences: told and experienced. I wanted to know about their lived experiences and understand the complex process of the subjective consciousness and identity construction of these teachers so that I would be able to know how this shapes and continues to shape their teacher position and performance of success. I wanted the teachers' lives to reflect the experiences of being a teacher in Durban and in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. Thus, I needed to access teachers in terms of their race, class and geographical specificity. In South Africa these factors continued to determine the apartheid constructed educational experience.
The life history interviews and a range of alternate modes I employed during the data production process (e.g. drawings and photographs), gave me access not only to a narrative of a "life lived" but of a life as "experienced" as well: of images, feelings, desires, thoughts and meanings known to the person whose life it was exploring. The ability of life history to focus
CHAPTER THREE MOMENTARIL Y CAUGHT GLIMPSES
on central moments, critical incidents and fateful moments that revolve around contradictions and challenges, offers more "rounded" and believable characters than the "flat", seemingly linear characters from other forms of qualitative inquiry (Sparkes 1994). I wanted the teachers to be representative of the teacher population in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. Thus I needed research participants in terms of race and gender since these factors continued to shape the subject positions and identities of teachers.
Whose stories did I choose to tell The key informants
Sampling procedures occur at different moments in the study regarding decisions about which aspects from the transcriptions to include, what to interpret in greater depth than others (material sampling) and which cases or parts of text are best used to demonstrate the findings (presentational sampling). In this chapter, it is connected to the decision about which persons to interview and from which groups they should come.
I initially started off the research production process by snowballing from one case to another.
My colleagues at university proved to be a valuable resource. They were able to introduce me to teachers they knew or worked with on other research projects, and friends who were known to be committed teachers. While I initially confined myself to persons from my own broader environment, I soon realised that the stranger the field, the more easily people (strangers) have something to say which was new and different for me. Using my position as lecturer, academic researcher and student teacher-supervisor, I also made contact with principals and teachers who gave me access to teachers who they believed "fitted" the description I provided. I did have a research agenda, and this enabled me to decide after the first meeting whether I was going to include the subject into the research study. The study was largely dependent on lengthy interviews (8 to 10 hours long) with the teachers, and this determined partly the small number of teachers that I was able to include in this study. At the same time I had to choose a sample wide enough for a diversity of types to be explored to include a range of perspectives.
The issue of sampling emerges at different points in the research process. In this study I had to make decisions in which I needed to explore the following:
•
•
•
How did I come to define the criteria by which teachers were selected for this study?
Who from the thousands of teachers did I select for this study?
How did I arrive at a final sample?
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Table One: The final sample of teachers and variables that were included in arriving at the selected teachers, employing the maximum variety sampling process
Sample Institution Teaching Gender Race Context of Location of
experience-phase Present Educational site
(number of years) teaching
I. Hlo Gabela Westville Prison- Senior Secondary Female African Westville Westville
Youth Centre (6 years) Prison Durban
Non-formal
2. Anna Bressan Cato Manor FET Female White Ex-HOD Springfield
Technical College Senior Secondary Technical Durban
(5 years) College (working class,
Non-Formal Indian suburb)
3. Trevor Sithokozile Senior Secondary Male African Ex-DET Claremont
Gumede Secondary School (21 years) Durban
Formal (working class,
African Township) 4. Ursula Bechet Secondary Senior Secondary Female Coloured Ex-HOR Sydenham
Collings (12 years) Durban
Formal (working and
middle class Coloured surburb) 5. Edwin Elisha Hillview Primary Senior Primary Male Indian Ex-HOD Reservoir Hills
(21 years) Durban
Formal (middle class
Indian surburb) 6. Daryl Franks Super Tutor College FET(Junior and Male White Ex-HON Umhlanga Durban
Senior Secondary) Private North
(4 years) (middle class,
Private White surburb)
The six teachers are drawn from the Durban Metroplitan Region in KwaZulu-Natal (see map).
Verbal consent from the teachers to have their real names included in the description of the sample was procured. The social locations of schools create the conditions for the relations of power and open up possibilities for teachers to perform their success. This study shows how teacher identities and discourses are produced, appropriated and challenged within the teacher position as daily practices within specific historical sites. It is necessary at this point to provide a more detailed description of the teachers and the specific locations in which they work. The racial labels I use in my description of the teachers in this study refer to the historical apartheid racial classifications. The use of the labels (African, Indian, White and Coloured) in this study is used to provide the racial and class fragmentation of the educational experiences under this bizarre system.
Hlo Gunene is an African woman. She is a thirty-one-year-old mother of one working at the Westville Prison School for juvenile criminals. At the prison school she teaches Life Orientation and Zulu. Her career as a teacher began in 1992, in a rural high school in Edendale.
Under the previous apartheid government, schools for Black learners were controlled by the Department of Education and Training, one of the four education departments created to serve the needs of the four major racialised groupings in South Africa. Three years later Hlo applied
CHAPTER THREE MOMENTARIL Y CAUGHT GLIMPSES
to teach at the prison school as well as serve as a member of the management team. She has been in this school for the past seven years. During the period of the research process, Hlo was also studying for her Masters in Education degree specialising in Social Justice and Peace Education. I was introduced to her as a potential research participant by one of my university colleagues.
Anna Bressan is a White woman, a British immigrant who has been granted South African citizenship. Anna came to South Africa with her mum, dad and twin sister twenty-nine years ago. She was just nine years old. She has travelled and experienced very different teaching and learning environments, from teaching the deaf, the physically challenged, and at rural African schools/technikons. She currently teaches at the Cato Manor Technical College, which comes with its own apartheid baggage. Initially a service provider for the Indian community, it has since changed. Staffed by predominantly Indian teachers and a White male principal, it offers a wide range of technical courses to a predominantly African and Indian learner population.
Anna has successfully managed to include fifty deaf learners in this school population.
Trevor Gumede is forty-four years old, African father of four. He teaches Physical Science and Mathematics in Sithokosizle High School. This is a peri-urban school located in a Black township about 16 kilometres from the city of Durban. The apartheid government created the township of K waDabeka in 1974. This school was built to cater for African learners who reside in this economically deprived area. Trevor lived in an area adjoining KwaDabeka called Clermont and travelled to school by public transport. There are only African learners in this school. Trevor has worked here since 1981 and his fellow teachers are all African too.
Ursula is a Coloured woman teaching Biology at Bechet High. This was originally a training college for Coloured teachers, which Ursula also attended. It is located in Sydenham, a residential area originally demarcated for the Coloured population. While the homes surrounding the school reflect a working class population, its poor infra-structure and lack of adequate public facilities make the school a hotspot for a range of social ills like drug trafficking and truancy. Ursula has taught in Bechet High ever since she qualified as a teacher.
The staff is predominantly Coloured with an Indian principal. Both African and Coloured learners are admitted to this school.
Edwin Elisha (Eddie) is an Indian male, currently teaching at Hillview Primary School. He is forty-three years old and the father of two children. As a qualified music specialist and a professional jazz saxophonist, Eddie's experience as a teacher has been far and wide. Initially he started his teaching career at Rhylands Primary in Cape Town, in a province far from his
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hometown Durban. Eddie interprets this posting as a punitive measure taken by the Department of Education, which regarded him as a student teacher who was "blacklisted".
What this meant 20 years ago was that Eddie was a political activist and a trouble-maker. He spent many of his years as an itinerant music specialist. He returned to KwaZulu-Natal in 1984. He has since taught in five other schools, including his present school. Hillview Primary School was been historically established under the House of Delegates, a department created to service the needs of the Indian population in South Africa. Eddie does not teach music in this school, but his guitar and saxophone are daily companions. Within the new OBE-Curriculum 2001, Eddie finds himself teaching across the five different learning areas. This school has an all Indian staff and is presently populated by Indian learners who reside in the historically Indian residential middle-class surburb of Reservoir Hills, as well as a large African learner population from the growing informal settlement that borders Reservoir Hills.
Daryl is a forty-three-year-old White male managing a private school in Urnhlanga, an elite suburb north of Durban. This area is populated by predomjnantly Whites and is a construction of the apartheid government. Daryl has taught since 1983. Qualified as a Mathematics and Physical Science teacher, he started his teaching in an ex-House of Assembly high school in the Gauteng Province. After three years as a "novice" teacher he moved to KwaZulu-Natal where he taught in another ex- House of Assembly high school for White learners. He resigned from teaching in the public system and established his own private school in 1993. Super Tutor offers a "service" to learners who live in the surrounding residential areas in Durban North.
Given its status as a private school, it is accessible only to a select group of learners who are predominantly White. The staff is all White, including the two adrrunistrative assistants.
Arriving at this final sample of teachers from a range of schooling sites prevalent in the province of KwaZulu-Natal was not a very easy task. I think the one important distinction I had to make in deciding on the nature of the sampling process, was to ask myself, in the context of this study, whether I was interested in substantive or theoretical conclusions. I was not really interested in observing the stance/s the teacher adopted in his relationship with the learners or the dynarrucs of his classroom behaviour and the intended academic success (Glaser and Strauss 1967, 80). My interest rested in understanding and interpreting the social processes that informed the teachers' "lived" experiences therefore the choice to employ theoretical sampling was most appropriate. In this case the teachers are selected according to their level of new insights for the developing theory. Theoretical sampling has been discussed in greater detail in the sections to follow.