CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL LANDSCAPE
2.5 Teacher Identity: Tensions between Roles
Both the extent of teachers' power and the nature of their professional identities have been topics of debate in recent years.I enter this debate sideways, since there now exists
a small but potentially significant literature on teacher identity especially as it relates to policy change. The fact that some of this literature is beginning to surface under the conditions of teaching and learning in developing countries,it is especially important for understanding the limits and possibilities for education policy to initiate such change.
The brilliant studies emerging from the University of KwaZulu-Natal on student teacher, teacher education and biographies of scientists (Samuel 200 I; Dhunpath 2000; Reddy 2000), alongside the recent works of Carrim (2001), Soudien (2001) and Mattson and Harley (2001) are exemplars of a new focus on practitioner identity and the problem of change. But what do we mean by 'teacher identities' in the context of this study? As Spillane (2000) explains: "By teachers' identities we mean their sense of self as well as their knowledge and beliefs, dispositions, interests and orientation towards work and change". In developing and refining the concept of teachers' identities,I have drawn on theorists involved in this debate both in South Africa and internationally. A useful distinction in the definition of teacher identity is made by Weldon (1999). He defines teacher identity in terms of 'being' and 'doing' . Being refers to teachers' rights - including their contractual arrangement,pay and what they expect as a result of being a teacher. Doing is defined in terms of responsibilities- how the functions that teachers are required to conduct come to be defined. What we know about teacher identity in South Africa is the result of loose categorizations that have become part of common understanding.
The following section outlines selected aspects of theories relating to teacher identities and its role in change and development. Teachers' identities have been variously described in relation to the nature and degree of power they have been perceived to hold and exert. In developing my understanding of teachers' identities,I compared two views of teachers' identities found in the literature: firstly, the view of teachers as mere 'pedagogical clerks' (Popkewitz, 1987: 279), and secondly, the notion of teacher as 'agents of transformation' (Davidoff & van der Berg, 1991:30). Other theories about teachers have tended to concentrate on the social location of teachers as 'professionals'and/or as 'workers' (Carrim,2001:15).In these views teachers' identities have been conceptualised in mainly functionalist and structuralist terms. In arguments
about teachers as professionals the nature of the role teachers serve in societies have been fore-grounded. Hence, the argument has been teachers' function in societies as 'intellectuals' and provision of this service to their societies. Wright (1979) suggested what defines the nature of teachers' identities: their intellectual function in societies.
Debates within this view have questioned the extent to which teachers in fact function as intellectuals, the degree of professional autonomy they have, the nature and length of their training and the ways in which they compare with other 'professionals' such as medical doctors and lawyers. While each of these views was useful in helping me to develop the concept of teachers' identities, I believe that they neither adequately reflect the everyday realities of the six teachers with whom I worked in this study nor do they offer a useful analysis that shapes their identities.
In this thesis, I find the life histories of the teachers to be particularly rich sources because incisively interpreted they present the teacher as an active subject and reveal the broader material conditions in/through which the conditions for power are created. Life history explicitly acknowledges the existence of teachers' multiple and conflicting, personal realities and perspectives as they narrate their world to give it form and meaning. At the same time it also enables me to understand how curriculum change and history acts on them, by providing them with the narrative codes and syntax with which to live and make sense oftheir lives (McLaren, 1993;Sikes, 1985).
The view that teachers are merely 'implementers of policy curriculum and the research findings of others' (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1990:2) and 'educational technicians' (Popkewitz, 1987:279) rests on the recognition of the trend towards the proletarianisation of pedagogy. By 'proletarianisation', Lawn& Ozga (1989) pointed to the lack of decision making powers teachers have despite their 'professional' qualifications. Generally, teachers are not in a position to impact meaningfully and directly on educational policy matters determining the nature of the curriculum they teach, or deciding on the rules, priorities or ethos of schools on local levels. Instead, teachers are subjected to educational bureaucratic controls, most of which tend to 'standardize' (Darling- Hammond, 1989) teaching and control teachers (Lawn& Ozga, 1989). This trend has led
to tendencies in work organization and work processes under capitalism which result in an increased division of labour,the separation of conception from the execution of tasks, increased controls over each step of the labour process, increased volumes of work and the downgrading of skills levels (Popkewitz, 1987). My conception of teacher identities takes these characteristics of teachers and organizes them around two specific categories of analysis. Accordingly, teacher identities could be described as the way teachers feel about themselves professionally and politically given the conditions of their work.
The professional basis for teacher identity: this means the ways in which teachers understand their capacity to teach as a result of, inter alia, subject matter competence, levels of training and preparation, and formal qualifications. In other words, the formal and prior standing that the teacher feels she has shapes her understanding of the ability to understand and implement a particular policy reform. In short, this relates to teacher understandings of their capacity to implement a proposed policy.
The political basis for teacher identity: this means the ways in which teachers understand and act on their value commitments, personal background and professional interests in the context of change demand. A teacher required to teach a new history or encourage the use of African languages or use constructivist principles (rather than a "back to basics"
approach) in a learning organization might directly or indirectly undermine a particular policy mandate without this being easily recognized by an outsider. In short, this reflects teacher understandings of their authority to act on or withhold action in response to a particular policy reform.
I selected these two propositions for building the construct of teacher identity not only because these elements remain neglected in the general literature on teacher change,but also because they are particularly appropriate under conditions of teaching and learning in developing countries. Proponents of this view highlight the management controls which affect classroom practice and which give the lie to the notion that teachers are accorded classroom autonomy and professional status, within the larger bureaucratic structures. Pillay (2003) reported in her study that reproductionist theories on teacher
identity have tended to stress external social structures and the accompanying one- dimensional view of power as constraining and limiting. Responding to the externally regulated constructions of what it means to be a teacher (identityjr-according to the literature sources, leaves teachers experiencing personal detachment and mis-alignment.
According to Hoadley (2000), 'external regulation refers to the pact between the state and the teacher; the ways in which the state regulates and constructs teacher identity'. In Ball's (1997) argument, the external regulation of teacher identity recasts them as 'state technicians' and attributes the loss of control to new forms of external regulation, the over-determination of teachers' work and new curriculum initiatives, all of which foster an emphasis on performativity. This perspective focuses on what the state and other forms of bureaucracy do to teachers. As Chisholm (1999) emphasized, and Jacklin (2000) argues,teachers respond to these constructions in complex ways, 'adopting some policies and identities and not others, as well as (engaging in) more open resistance or contestation of official meanings and practices'. Mattson (1999) concurs with this explanation in her study on teacher identity and socialization. She explains that while policies advocating democracy and freedom try to change teachers' identities, the strategy of mimicry is a way of side-stepping it, meaning that teachers respond by mimicking a changed identity without really committing to change. She refers to this position as Strategic Mimicry. This highlights how public constructions of teacher identity are contested and recontextualized in the schools and classrooms (Jacklin, 2000; Mattson & Harley, 1999) because of the forged separation between teacher subjectivities and the teacher position.
In these views teachers' identities are conceptualised in mainly structuralist terms, in that teachers' identities are defined in relation to the class structure of societies and teachers' location within it. This focuses on problematising the class location of teachers (typically categorized as middle-class work) in terms of Marxist and neo-Marxist arguments (Ginsburg, 1987; Lawn & Ozga, 1989). In this way,teacher work identities are examined in the light of capitalist modes of production, highlighting the ambiguous class location of their work. The contradictory class location of teachers - between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat (Harris, 1982) undermines the conventional wisdom of teachers' class and
status positions and the claim to professionalism (Sachs & Smith, 1988),the assumptions along which the state operates. Despite this,Lawn & Ozga (1989) engaged with issues of human agency in the actual experiences of teachers as workers, where they note the direct influence of variables such as gender, age, positions in the educational hierarchy that teachers actually occupy as well as the nature of their qualifications on the nature of the conditions of their work. Hence, arguments about teachers as workers tend to remain structuralist. Carrim (2001) noted that these theories of teachers' identities have emerged out of modernist modes of theorising. They have bipolarized structure and agents, professionals and workers. He argues that these theories of teachers' identities do not engage with particular teachers' experiences, tend not to work with teachers' actual senses of their own identities and reduce the complexities of teachers' daily experiences.
Teachers are more than professionals and/or workers. They are raced, gendered, with various political opinions, religions, sexual orientations and ethnicities. These 'other' characteristics of teachers' identities tend not to be given sufficient academic coverage in the functionalist and structuralist accounts of teachers as workers and/or professionals. If we are to capture the precise nature of teachers' identities it is important that we address the actual lived realities of teachers themselves,their perceptions and their experiences.